Her predecessors took office in times of turmoil in the Duquesne City School District and often faced angry crowds at board meetings.

But Audrey Utley, the new chairwoman of the state board of control in Duquesne, got to share the stage at her first board meeting on Tuesday with 19 smiling "Zero Heroes."

Zero Heroes are students who through the course of a nine-week grading period have no absences, tardies or suspensions. In recent months, they've been honored at board meetings and the numbers in the group have increased as the year goes on.

Dr. Utley asked reporters to take note of the success of the line of students who stretched across the stage and included representatives from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Earlier in the meeting, the board also honored a group of "students of the month" who had been chosen by their teachers for outstanding academics and behavior.

"We have more great stories to come," said Dr. Utley, who retired as superintendent of the Middletown Area School District in Dauphin County in June and is one of the state Education Department's Distinguished Educators.

Dr. Utley was appointed to the Duquesne board last week to replace former chairman Thomas Sgriccia, who was appointed in August and resigned recently to return to retirement, according to Michael Race, a spokesman with the state education department.

She is a resident of Middletown and her husband, Richard, is the state's deputy auditor general. She holds a doctorate of education from Widener University.

Dr. Utley is coming to the board at a time when the district, which includes grades K-8 since the closing of the high school in June, is hoping to move in a new direction. She is the fourth chair of the board of control since the state took over the district in autumn 2000.

After years of severe cuts to programs and activities prompted by dire finances, school officials are now attempting to build a successful elementary program that will improve students' scores on the state's standardized tests and prepare pupils for transition to high school.

Dr. Utley appears to have an almost custom-made background to deal with the problems facing Duquesne.

As a superintendent, she was involved in the education department's Page One initiative which was designed "to come up with strategies to close the achievement gap between minority students and majority students."

She said the initiative looked at successful schools throughout the country, those that had 95 percent minority and low-income students but scored 95 percent at or above the proficiency level on state tests.

"We tried to bring those ideas back to Pennsylvania," she said.

Before working at the Middletown Area School District, Dr. Utley spent 16 years at the Steelton-Highspire School District as a teacher, curriculum coordinator and assistant principal at the elementary level.

That district had demographics similar to Duquesne: it was a small community and was a steel town where the mill, Bethlehem Steel, "went belly up" and the academic achievement has gone down.

Dr. Utley said she is looking forward to putting her expertise to use in Duquesne and to working with the staff from the school and Allegheny Intermediate Unit, which is currently managing the Duquesne district.

"My goal is to enhance the educational opportunities available to the students in Duquesne and to focus on maximizing student achievement," she said.

High on her agenda is creating some athletic and arts-related extra-curricular activities for the K-8 pupils. The board already has headed in that direction with last month's approval of the purchase of uniforms for a seventh and eighth grade football team.

"Some kids come to school because they like to do those things as well," she said.

She's also hoping to get community involvement in the effort to improve the school.

Dr. Utley has spent time in the past two weeks meeting with the various constituencies of the district, including the principal, school staff and teachers union president.

She's hoping now "to get out to meet more of the people of the community."

And she wants to lay to rest any fears about the elementary school being closed in Duquesne.

"My charge from the secretary has been to do what we can to improve the school. There's been no consideration of anything else," she said.