__________________ Nassau _________________
HERALD All the news of the Five Towns
Vol. 100 no. 52
Solidarity for Israel, Hanukkah
What I want for Christmas
Page 5
Page 10
DECEMBER 21 - 27, 2023
$1.00
School district officials mull armed security
Hewlett-Woodmere Board of Ed hosts company presentation “It’s something that, unfortunately at this point in our society, we need to have this T h e H e w l e t t - Wo o d m e r e conversation and have this as a Board of Education is discuss- board, as a governance team, ing the option of arming secu- but also as a community,” rity officers guarding school Hewlett-Woodmere Superintendent Ralph Marino Jr. said. “We property. Donald Flynn, president of want to keep our students and Covert Investigations and Secu- staff and visitors safe.” rity, a school securiCovert has been ty assessment and involved with the dismanagement compatrict for over a year, ny, spoke at the Dec. providing health, 13 school board work safety and security meeting. personnel. At last As of Dec. 6, there week’s presentation, had been at least 80 Flynn detailed for the school shootings board and the public across the United how armed security States this year. This could be added to the tops any year since RAlPH MARIno district’s five schools, 2 0 0 8 , w h e n C N N Superintendent, to deal with threats began tracking shoot- Hewlett-Woodmere from active shooters. ings at schools. Fifty- school district “Our discussion one had occurred on tonight is not to reckinderg ar ten-through-12th- ommend or not recommend — grade school grounds, and 29 on it’s to provide as many details college campuses, killing at … that we can to the board and least 37 people and injuring 80, the administration as it relates according to CNN’s analysis of to the potential armed guard events reported by the Gun Vio- initiative,” Flynn said. lence Archive, Education Week The district refrained from and Everytown for Gun Safety. Continued on page 12
By PARKER SCHUG
pschug@liherald.com
Courtesy Allan Spielman
Rocking for Israel Richie Borah, left and Myron Baer performing as Retro69. Story, more photos, Page 18.
Battling antisemitism in school
Focus is on safe spaces and preventing incidents By PARKER SCHUG pschug@liherald.com
While public schools in the Five Towns, and local yeshivas, are taking measures to combat antisemitism in their academic environments, Richard Altabe, the lower school principal at the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, says that more should have been done sooner. “The issue of antisemitism was not a topic like racism, let’s say, or any other, like antiLGBTQ or Islamophobia, (or) anti-Asian bias,” Altabe said of the area schools’ curriculums. The Anti-Defamation League reported 2,031 incidents of antisemitism across the country between Oct. 7 and Dec. 7, up from 465 during the same period in 2022 — a 337 percent increase, and the highest number of incidents in any twomonth period since 1979, when the organization began tracking them. Most of the reports, the ADL said — over 1,400 of them — “could be clearly linked to the Israel-
Hamas war.” Altabe did not comment on where, specifically, he is seeing Jewish hate, but said that it is an issue everywhere, as a result of students’ use of social media, where he believes antisemitic rhetoric is prevalent. HALB administrators sent a letter to parents immediately after the Israel-Hamas war began in October, advising them to prevent their children from using TikTok, Altabe said. “We always had a position against TikTok, but we made a pretty strong demand taking kids off TikTok because all the negative imagery coming out of that Hamas attack was being shown,” he said. “We wanted to protect our kids.” In the Lawrence school district, the focus for high school students is on experiential learning, though projects or presentations — for instance, creating art inspired by conversations with Holocaust survivors, art teacher Janet Ganes explained. As a child of Holocaust survivors, Continued on page 12
W
e want to keep our students and staff and visitors safe.