_________________ ______________ ________________ _____________ VALLEY WANTAGH STREAM
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Vol. 34 No. 6
FEBRUARY 2 - 8, 2023
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DEADLINE MARCH 1ST
Memorial’s Room 107 takes on new role By BRENdAN CARPENTER bcarpenter@liherald.com
Justine Stefanelli/Herald
FREd YUTkowiTz lookS into Room 107, the new wellness suite at Memorial Junior High School now dedicated in to his late wife, Stephanie Ginsberg.
Room 107 at Memorial Junior High School was once a place where students piled in from a crowded hallway for health class. Now it’s a place to remember a teacher who taught there for 42 years, a decade after her death. The room, now known as the Ginsberg Wellness Suite, was dedicated on Jan. 24 in memory of Stephanie Ginsberg. Ginsberg spent countless hours in that classroom. She met, taught and assisted thousands of students Continued on page 16
Central pitches $8 million capital project funding package By JUAN lASSo jlasso@liherald.com
Board of Education members took a grand tour of the Valley Stream Central High School District’s four schools, hopping from classroom to classroom with building administrators in tow. Their mission? To assess the financial needs of each school and hash out an initial vision for the district’s proposed budget plan to meet those needs. In particular, they aimed to figure out, from their list of possible school improvement capital projects, which ones get funded and which ones get culled. This budget season, board
members approved securing roughly $2.23 million in what administrators described as “must-have,” meat-and-potatoes school improvement budget items, as outlined by Superintendent Wayne Loper. These budget items include repairing and maintaining blacktop and concrete, renovating faculty restrooms, buying an additional bus and replacing musical instruments. Additionally, administrators aimed to add even more modernized furniture to classrooms in the district. Already, district students are learning in classes outfitted with triangular desks with flattened corners that can easily
be moved and joined together to create collaborative, friendly learning spaces. Science labs with ceiling-mounted charging cables. Libraries with cozy study pod chairs and swivel seats, which also serve as laptop holders. Yet despite this trend toward modernity, traces of outdated and out-of-fashion architecture remain. Among the biggest eyesores, according to Loper, are the Venetian blinds used to shade classroom windows in all four schools, shades whose time he said has long passed and simply must go. Beyond those items, board members were left to consider
seven potential large-scale projects totaling upwards of $7 million in price. The list largely reflected what principals in all four schools saw as priority renovations for their buildings. And some items were more urgent than others — like the need for a new $1.35 million storage space facility at South after the district’s architect ruled that
South’s garage, its current storage place, is to be knocked down and must be rebuilt from scratch. “There’s no basement at South because this school is built on a flood plain, so storage is at a premium,” said Loper. “The garage needs to be torn down and replaced with a butler-type building. It’s one of those large Continued on page 9