Published nationally in the School Administrator Magazine January 2022 By Joseph Batory When I finished high school in June of 1960, as someone off the streets of Philadelphia, I saw two future choices.My top option was to pursue a blue-collar job along side my father at the huge General Electric plant located in my Southwest […]

Published in the School Administrator Magazine February 2025 By Joseph P. Batory Back in 1984, I became the superintendent of schools in Upper Darby, located just outside of Philadelphia. This was hardly planned.Within a span of four years, two formidable superintendents in Upper Darby had succumbed to heart attacks because of the extreme pressures of […]

By Joseph Batory “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”― George Bernard Shaw Our political system of course involves partisanship. Those elected with party endorsements are expected to generally support his/her party platform and its objectives. But this does not mean that each of these politicians must […]

By Joseph Batory During my years as Upper Darby Superintendent of Schools )1984-1999),  I collected a great many memories that I cherish to this day. And here is a very delightful one. I had met and become familiar with two Baptist ministers in Drexel Hill, PA (where my wife and I lived)  who happened to […]

By Joseph Batory Looking at the picture of economic inequality across the USA is uncomfortable for any caring person. That’s because in the richest country in the world somewhere around 37 million Americans live at or below the poverty line.  Too many of our nation’s children (around 11 million) live in poverty which is the […]

From the memoirs of Joseph Batory   July 19, 2024 Upper Darby High School’s Mendenhall-Tyson Scholarship, named for two former Upper Darby School District superintendents (Hendrickson Mendenhall and John Tyson) dates back to 1928. As Upper Darby’s Superintendent of Schools, I became a member of the Mendenhall-Tyson Scholarship Foundation Board in 1984. During the late […]

July 19,  2024 By Joseph Batory During my years as Upper Darby Superintendent of Schools )1984-1999),  I  collected a great many memories that I cherish to this day. And here is just one more magical one which occurred in the midst of great adversity, During the 1990’s, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began to annually under […]

By Joseph Batory In the 1600’s in France, education was something for the rich alone.  For those born into poverty or from working class backgrounds, it was a certainty that these children would never receive an education. But in the late 17th century, a Catholic priest, Jean Baptiste de La Salle, began doing the unthinkable.  […]

By Joseph Batory The Constitution of the United States has long been distorted by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to convince millions of its naive followers that the USA’s long list of mass murders have nothing to do with the USA’s  incredibly lax gun control regulations. The NRA’s absurd mythology is that the Framers of […]