Donna Durno retired in March after a decade as the director of the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, but her hiatus from education has been brief.

On Wednesday, Dr. Durno will leave for Oman, where she will lead a seven-member accreditation team of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools that will decide if the ABA-An IB World School should have its accreditation renewed.

"I was just adjusting to being retired. But I love this work and for people on the team, it's one of the best kinds of professional development. You get to see how a school operates," said Dr. Durno, of Monroeville, a former commissioner for basic education in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Durno said she particularly enjoys visiting schools and spent the 1989-90 school year traveling the country, teaching in 46 schools in 19 states.

The ABA-An IB World School is located in the city of Muscat, was founded in 1987 and given its original accreditation by the middle states association in 1990. The school serves about 1,000 students in grades K-12 and the students come from 59 countries, Dr. Durno said. It has an international baccalaureate curriculum at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

The middle states association has three commissions -- one each for elementary, secondary and higher education accreditation. The commission for secondary education handles all of the overseas accreditations, Dr. Durno said.

She is currently a member of that commission and also has served as a trustee on the board of the association and has chaired other accreditation teams in the past. This, however, is her first international assignment.

She will head a team that will include John Plesha, a retired principal at Seneca Valley High School and an associate director for the middle states secondary commission and a representative from New Jersey.

International representatives to the team will come from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Italy.

The team will spend 10 days in Oman performing its analysis and then make a recommendation to the Middle States Commission on Secondary Education, which will vote on the school's accreditation.

Dr. Durno said one reason international schools seek accreditation from U.S. associations is so parents of children attending those schools know they can matriculate to American universities. In other cases, school officials may want their school community to know that they teach to standards in the United States to attract Americans living abroad.

In preparation for her assignment, Dr. Durno has spent the past month reading a 300-page self-study that school officials have provided to the accreditation team.

Part of what the team will evaluate is whether the school is meeting the goals that it has set for itself, Dr. Durno said.

"We don't just analyze where they are, but the areas where they want to develop," Dr. Durno said.

The team will also look at the school's leadership and at health and safety issues, she said.

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