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your HEALTH body / mind / fitness
and April 25, 2024
HERALD Page 3
with a focus on:
Senior Healthy Living
Vol. 27 No. 18
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Senior art show draws a crowd $1.00 $1.00
APRIl 25 - MAY 1, 2024
Pre-K special ed. providers may get substantial raise leaders like Michael Giangregorio, Samantha Goetz and Mazi Pilip, as well as dozens of eduA sector of special education cators and parents of children services for young children has with special needs, Blakeman been severely underfunded for described the county’s compen25 years, according to some law- sation for such providers as makers — but that could soon “below the average.” Giangregorio brought this change. Nassau County officials pro- issue to light, the county execupose giving those tive said. He’s long early childhood interbeen an advocate for vention service prochildren and adults viders a raise, potenwith special needs, tially elevating comand says the county pensation from $40 has had a hard time per half-hour to $50. retaining therapists The increase will because compensaaffect providers who tion simply was not officer critical precompetitive to what school services — was being offered in like speech, occupa- MIchAEl surrounding regions. tional and physical “We checked with GIANGREGoRIo our budget office and therapy — to children between 3 and 5 Nassau County we made a determinawith special needs as legislator tion that we could they get ready for increase” the comkindergarten. pensation, Blakeman said. “We have many people who Giangregorio, who’s district require services here,” County represents parts of Merrick, Executive Bruce Blakeman said Bellmore, Wantagh and Seaof contractual preschool spe- ford, said he was honored to cial education services. “It pro- stand with Blakeman for this vides preschool services to chil- “monumental decision that dren throughout Nassau Coun- reflects our unwavering comty.” mitment to early childhood Joined at a recent news con- education.” Especially as a ference with Republican county
By JoRDAN VAlloNE
jvallone@liherald.com
T
Jordan Vallone/Herald
A centennial celebration for Newbridge Road School is planned for next week. Students and staff have been preparing for the May 3 event by creating things like a Centennial Native Garden. Above, sixth-grade students and technology teacher Michael Bevilacqua began digging the garden on the school’s front lawn.
A celebration fit for 100 years of history at Newbridge Road School By JoRDAN VAlloNE jvallone@liherald.com
Newbridge Road School, in North Bellmore, will mark 100 years next month — a monumental milestone that is deserving of a celebration as special as the occasion. A year and a half of planning by an anniversary committee will culminate in a daylong event on May 3 that will encourage students and staff, as well as former staff and alumni, to reflect on what Newbridge Road means, and has always meant, to the North Bellmore community.
Uncovering a slice of North Bellmore history Over the past two decades, Newbridge Road has celebrated its 80th and 90th anni-
versaries, and many of the documents that were uncovered during the preparation for those celebrations were vital in planning the event next week. A schoolhouse that once stood on what is now the front lawn of Newbridge Road was built in 1908, the same year the school district was established. “We had a lot to work with,” Lynda Brust, a third-grade teacher at the school who attended Newbridge Road as a child, said. “There are Rubbermaid tubs of documents that go back to the formation of this district in 1908. We have the minutes of the first-ever Board of Education meeting — the minutes that declare that 76 members of this community decided to create a unified school disCoNtiNued oN pAGe 8
hey’re helping to improve the lives of these individuals.
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