________ Franklin square/elmont _______
HERALD superintendent’s educator journey
NY-04 campaign trail addition
Nassau catches World Cup fever
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Vol. 25 No. 32
august 3 - 9, 2023
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Elmont students learn from local businesses By REI WolFsoHN Intern
Local students are learning about local business from mentors and by working with clientele this summer as part of the inaugural Gift of Giving Student Ambassador program. Nine students are participating in the sixweek hands-on internship. Interns are paid through Gift of Giving Corporation at no cost to the business. “They wanted to take on something different and challenge themselves this summer,” program director Elizabeth Forbes said. Forbes continues to raise money to pay interns for their work through the Gift of Giving fundraising process. Six businesses or civic offices stepped up to participate in the program. “It’s great to see that when you reach a certain level in life, you still want to give back,” Forbes said. Ahmed Zaky of A2Z Auto Masters wants to give back. He has high school senior Andrew Forbes and sophomore Zyddon Powell interning with him this summer.
“I’ve been with the program since it first started, so I’d like to stay with the program,” Zaky said. “And help as many boys and girls as we can.” Throughout the internship, Andrew and Powell learned from Zaky how to work with customers and service cars with oil changes, tire changes and replacing motors. “He’s a good teacher,” Andrew said. The internship has solidified Andrew’s ambition to enter the auto repair field. He learned about the program from his guidance counselor. Additionally, he credits the program with the improvement of his communication skills. “The program is nice. It taught me a lot of communication skills,” Andrew said. Summit Physical Therapy is providing incoming college student Linsey Swift with an internship to assist her with learning to better communicate with the public and provide physical therapy to patients. While studying what physical therapists do, Swift has enjoyed an education about muscles and nerves. “I help with creating the hot packs and help
Edwin Chavez/ Herald
Raising $5,500 for the hungry In last Saturday’s 5K walk to fight food insecurity, Ralph Ramos finished second, Carolyn Theogenes was the winner and Blessy Abraham finished third. More photos, Page 10.
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State finds fault with Sewanhaka schools’ computerized systems Comptroller’s audit says district’s operations, financial, personal data are vulnerable By NIColE WagNER nwagner@liherald.com
A state audit of the Sewanhaka Central High School District’s computer systems found that the district lacked a written contingency plan that would allow it to recover from malicious acts such as a ransomware attack. The key findings of the state comptroller’s audit, released on June 30, concluded that Sewanhaka did not have a written contingency plan for its information technology, or IT, systems, placing the district’s computerized data at risk in the event of a disruption or disas-
ter. The audit, conducted between July 21, 2021, and Dec. 7, 2022, identified areas of risk, including personal, private and sensitive information, as well as financial and business office data. The audit described an IT contingency plan as “a school district’s recovery strategy, composed of the procedures and technical measures that help enable the recovery of business office operations after an unexpected IT disruption or disaster.” Ransomware attacks were highlighted in the audit as an “increasingly sophisticated
threat.” Ransomware is described as a type of malicious software, or malware, that threatens to publish or block access to data or a computer system until a ransom is paid. In the event of an attack, the audit noted, the Sewanhaka district has insufficient guidance to react and resume operations rapidly, which could render the school district unable to perform business office operations, such as the ability to process checks to pay vendors or employees. An outdated October 2009 written disaster recovery plan for the school district failed to
address the range of threats to its current IT systems, according to the state audit. At the time of the audit, the district had already taken steps to ensure data continuity within its current computerized operations in the event of disruption, according to Brian Messinger, the district’s director of classroom instructional technology and student
achievement. However, he acknowledged these steps were not centralized in a single IT contingency plan. The district received the findings of the audit on June 5, and Board of Education President Michael Jaime responded in a letter to the state comptroller on June 20. In the letter, ConTInued on PAge 3