Community Update

If you underestimate the ingenuity and resourcefulness of a Syosset student, be prepared to eat your words! Morrison and Sydney Holzer had more than enough of both to turn last week’s modest snowfall into a massive snowman and illustrate how – with a little hard work and a lot of persistence – big things can come from humble beginnings. By demonstrating there indeed was more than enough snow, I’m delighted they’ve proven me wrong about the snowman... and right about Syosset’s amazing students.

HBT isn’t the only place where you can travel around the world in a blink. Robbins Lane third graders in Social Studies are exploring geographic regions, identifying unifying characteristics and analyzing how geographic factors impact community culture, history, and traditions. To demonstrate what they learned, each third grade classroom was transformed into its own country and students were able to “travel” around the world to immerse themselves in different cultures. Our students painted a Mexican tile after learning about the importance of mosaic art in Mexico, made candy sushi in Japan after learning about traditional foods, created paper gondolas in Italy after learning about Venice, and built chariots in Greece after learning about the Olympics. It’s never been so easy to hop from Mexico to Italy, Japan to Greece! What an exciting way for our students to learn to appreciate the amazing cultures and traditions of their classmates.

The Board of Education met this past Tuesday to review community feedback on the draft facilities improvement proposal. I reviewed the results of the community survey on the facilities proposal and took the opportunity to address a number of the questions that came through in the survey. The Board discussed the feedback and their perspectives on priorities. We will soon be sharing a document answering all our most frequently asked questions about our facilities needs.

The next Board meeting will be on Monday, February 12th, where we will begin discussing the school budget for the 2024-2025 school year. Yes, it’s already that time of year!

The Board-appointed Anti-Bias Task Force has announced it will host a Community Forum at
8:00 pm on Thursday, February 8th in the South Woods Middle School Cafeteria. The purpose of the forum is to gather ideas from the public that the Task Force may consider for adoption into its recommendations to the Board of Education. To register to attend the forum, and sign up to speak, you will need to fill out the registration form at this link. The meeting will also be live streamed at this link.

We are archiving details about the task force, including the Board’s charge, the membership, and meeting summaries, here on our District website.

We have some more *huge* news in our science research program. Senior Vincent Huang has moved on to be a Finalist in the 2024 Regeneron Talent Search competition. He is one of only forty people nationwide to make it to this stage - and one of only three on Long Island. He will now head to Washington, D.C. this March to compete for the opportunity to win a $250,000 scholarship. His project is titled: "An Advanced Computer App for Simulating White-beam Diffraction Laue Patterns in Modern X-ray Crystallography." Congratulations, Vincent!

Among the Syosset Science Stars is our Science Olympiad Team – who earned third place at the MIT Invitational out of a total 72 teams. This win made them the highest-ranking New York team ever at this tournament and it was a big jump from last year’s 11th place finish at this same tournament. Next weekend, On February 3rd, Syosset High School will be hosting the Nassau East Regional Tournament where teams will be competing for a spot at States. Way to go, #SyOly!

This morning, I read “The Boy Who Grew A Forest” to Ms. Lopez’ 3rd grade class at Willits. The book started with the proverb: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today.” Our Syosset students are also planting seeds for the future. Concerned about the diminishing number of butterflies flitting around their neighborhoods, our students and others discovered that diminished numbers of native plants growing in local gardens was having an effect on the butterfly population – so, they took action. As part of YICG GV Leadership Program, they researched native plants and pollinators that would help and then organized more than 35 other young people to plant 5X5 gardens in their backyards. The “YICG ReWild Long Island” initiative took shape last summer. But it won’t take 20 years for their efforts to have an impact. In fact, the fruits of their labor should “take flight” not long after their plants start budding this Spring. Seniors Samyukhtha ArunKumar, Nishanth Naveen, Dylan Benedictus, and Shreya Vasudevan will soon be recognized by the Town of Oyster Bay for their efforts to beautify our community.

#Light&Love
Tom Rogers