Vladimir Savinov

==Background==
* Resident of Upper St. Clair who help to organize efforts for better schools.
===Media===
* Upper St. Clair residents protest school board's actions, September 19, 2006, by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
:In Upper St. Clair, where the school superintendent is leaving to take a job with a larger school district in Eastern Pennsylvania, anger over the style and policies of a newly elected school board majority spilled into the streets and surfaced at the board meeting yesterday.
:About 40 men, women and children carrying signs staged a peaceful protest in front of the high school prior to the start of the regular school board meeting. Later, an overflow crowd at the meeting gave Superintendent James Lombardo a standing ovation and called for the resignation of board member Carol Coliane."
:...
:Mrs. Coliane had proposed eliminating three parents from the list of volunteer coaches for the district's Odyssey of the Mind teams, which enable children to compete in problem-solving exercises locally, nationally and internationally.
: In September, 2006, school board members approved those parents and six others as Odyssey of the Mind coaches in an 7-0 vote, with Mrs. Coliane abstaining. The three are supporters of USC-WAVES, a group that was formed after a newly elected school board voted in February to cut the International Baccalaureate program, a Switzerland-based initiative that is taught from a global perspective. After a group of parents filed a lawsuit, the program was restored for two years, but its future beyond 2008 remains uncertain.
:At the protest, Vladimir Savinov, one of its organizers, said: "Since the election, we have had a pattern of elected officials abusing power. The most dangerous thing is they are going after people who criticize them."
: Mr. Savinov, who has lived in the United States for 16 years, said it reminds him of the kind of behavior he saw in his native Russia.
Savinov