The Lynbrook High School cafeteria was filled with students, families and community members during the district’s regular Board of Education meeting on Jan. 10. The evening consisted of student achievements and middle school instructional highlights, among other important notices.
Lynbrook High School senior Sophia LoCicero was honored by the board for her impressive 1,000th career point in basketball. LoCicero is only the second female student-athlete from the district to ever accomplish this. With her teammates in attendance, she was awarded a beautiful plaque designed by high school art teacher Tom Sena.
Marion Street Elementary School was also recognized for their dedication and support towards amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research. Principal Theresa Macchia spoke about how the students and staff have raised money and awareness for ALS throughout the years and introduced special guest Chris Pendergast, an individual with ALS who the students have worked closely with. The school was presented with a banner during the meeting by the ALS Ride for Life organization for being a 2017 Gold Participant.
During the Superintendent’s Report, students and faculty members from North and South middle schools presented instructional highlights. South Middle School focused on middle school electives which included Public Speaking and Coding. The students discussed what these courses consist of and how beneficial they are, while North Middle School highlighted the health and wellness side of the middle school curriculum. This included ways that students are learning how to manage stress and the different activities they perform daily to foster social emotional growth and mindfulness.
In addition, Superintendent of School Dr. Melissa Burak announced that the district’s annual PTA Founders’ Day will be on Feb. 8, 2018 and that the annual county-wide financial forum will be on Feb. 9, 2018. After praising the middle school students and faculty for their report, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Gerard Beleckas shared his own curriculum update with the community. He thanked the board for allowing the reformatting of room 210 in the math department of Lynbrook High School. The change allowed for different creative lessons in the classroom, including a statistics lesson which enabled students to set up their own testing companies to compare generic and name brand companies.
Dr. Paul Lynch, assistant superintendent for finance, operations, and information systems, also provided a capital bond update for the community. Air conditioning updates for all the elementary and middle school gymnasiums as well as plans for the middle school locker rooms and the Atlantic Avenue wrestling and locker rooms are being submitted to the New York State Education Department’s Office of Facilities Planning this month. It is expected that the plans will not be coming out of New York State until the spring of 2019 with construction anticipated for summer 2019. The district is also putting together a timeline for the larger projects such as those at Lynbrook High School, working with the architect and fiscal adviser to finalize a schedule. These plans are much more involved and are being looked at in great detail. The high school plans are expected to head to the state in the fall of 2018. It is likely that they will not come out of the state until fall 2019 and anticipated ground breaking will be summer 2020 after the bid.