001Yeah. Okay. Is okay. >> Okay. meeting to order. for his report. >> Great. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Welcome. Thank you for attending tonight. I'm John McMar, superintendent of schools, and we welcome you to our December uh board of education business meeting. Um, as we uh like to uh each uh each meeting, we always like to start off with some good news uh and do some recognitions of some kind. Uh at our December meeting over the past couple of years, uh we've had the privilege of recognizing our our all county fall athletes. So, we invited our all county fall athletes to be here uh uh this evening. Another outstanding season for our uh our fall athletes uh and was kind of topped off by a Nassau County championship for our our WA varsity football team.
002So congratulations to them. Um yeah, please. Um outstanding season for them. Uh I want to coach want to thank coach Sachs uh for once again, you know, a repeat performance. Uh we did this last year and congratulating county champions. So it's certainly nice to be back here doing that again. Uh we also had a number of of outstanding uh team performances across the board uh and individual performances as well. So, I invited Miss Keane, our our director of athletics, uh, just to pass out certificates and call each of our our student athletes up. So, I'll invite Miss Keen to the microphone to do that. Um, u, Miss Keen, did you want to start with the, uh, team or the individual? >> Individual. So, we're going to start with all the individual. Um, we just ask
003when you come up and and take your certificate, then to gather on the stage. We'd like to do a a photo of uh, everyone uh, after uh, after we announce all the individuals. So, Miss Ke, >> good evening everyone. Um, as Mr. McNamera said, we had another great fall season. Uh, extremely proud of all of our student athletes, um, and their successes and extremely proud to be part of all of their successes, uh, both on and off the field. So, we're going to start with girls soccer. We have Ava Barbario, all county. We have Caitlyn Bao, all county. We have Michaela Highland, all county girls soccer. Shannon Udell, all county. And Kayla Manx, all county honorable mention. For boys soccer, we have Josh Enriquez, all county. And we have Giovanni Stornelloo, all county honorable mention.
004>> Just go right just go right up onto the stage. Okay. In cheerleading, we have Emma Palmisano for all county and we have Mia Sanuchi, all county. And then we have coach Nicole Jacoma. She was the assistant coach of the year. >> Congratulations. >> Okay, for girls volleyball, we have Kylie Hoffman, all county. >> What happened? >> Oh, wait. I'll fix it. Stay up here. Stay up here. >> There you go. And for boys volleyball, we have Tom Dylan. >> Congratulations. >> Okay, for cross country we have Riley Adams, all county. Aaron Burns, all county. Ethan Chen, all county. Brady Wilin, all county. And we have Ian Frasier, all county, all state, Nassau County class 3 champion and NISA sportsmanship award winner. Some of the girls just walked in. Come on up. We called you
005names. Come on up. Okay. And for football, We have Devin Pion, county champion and all county. Ryan Favven, county champion. Matt Riley, county champion. Matt Jacabello, County Champion. Max Savina, County Champion. Luke Ganskowski, County Champion. Step. We'll figure it out. If it's not there, we'll figure it out. >> Oh, yep. >> Sorry. Football, take a step to your left. Football. Football left. Go this way. >> Oh, sorry. My left. Your right. >> Are we going up there for the individual? Nice. >> Okay. Moving on, we have Luke Gunscowski, County Champion. Jack Walsh, County Champion, Carter Laughman, County Champion, and all county honorable mention Luke Rubo. We have County Champion Raymond Azeriti, County Champion. Phoenix Tetro, County Champion Joe Adamo, County Champion Luke Martini, county champion, all county and first team all Long Island. Ryan Rice,
006county champion. Joe Nicholson, County Champion, All County National Football Foundation Scholar Athlete, Golden 11 and First Team All Long Island. Michael Adamo, County Champion. Anthony Damato, County Champion. Jaden Emmenair, County Champion. Tristan Tullson, County Champion. Matt Moran, County Champion. Marty Met, County Champion. Michael Arteka, County Champion. Tyler Owen, County Champion. >> Aon Smith, County Champion. Connor Smith, county champion. >> Brendan Wood, county champion. Nico Montago, County Champion. Ryan Martone, County Champion, unsung hero for Lafo. Antonio Damato, county champion. James Antinetti, County Champion. Shawn Murphy, County Champion. >> Shawn Murphy, County Champion. Patrick Forthover, County Champion. >> Sam Evans, County Champion. >> Bobby Freeman, County Champion. So, someone's got yours. We'll just fix it in the hallway. It's all right. Just grab one. >> Bobby Freeman. Frank Palmisano, County Champion. Michael Christopherus, County Champion. Matthew Figalozi,
007County Champion. >> Joseph Lupo, County Champion. Lauron Gilbert, county champion. >> Adrien Dash Chavez, County Champion. >> Thomas Christopher Reedus, >> County Champion, >> Joseph Moy, County Champion, >> Jake Rowski, County Champion. >> Jake Shane Ad County champion Charles de la Croce count county champion Venenzo Fain County champion Lo Treader County champion Connor Kurs County champion and we have Coach Saxs, Coach Morrow, Coach Wson, Coach Simeone, come on up. No, that's Tommy. >> Congratulations. You dropped the buffet. Boys, if you could just go out into the hallway, we have a small token of our congratulations from the district. Thank you. Congratulations again to all of our athletes. I'll be back. >> Me and Marty already have the team. I guess. All right, congrats on once again to all of our all county athletes. Thank you
008for being here. Uh, one other congratulations this evening as well. Uh, we have um a retirement that we're going to be accepting on our agenda from uh one of our employees uh Donna D. Jaganji. She's uh one of our our monitors over at WA uh both on our bus and and in the cafeteria. I want to thank her for her dedicated service over the past many years to the district and wish her well. Unfortunately, Donna couldn't be here this evening, but we still wanted to take a moment just to congratulate her and and wish her and her family well. Um, and then, uh, tonight, uh, we have a a special presentation. We have, uh, several of our students from our science research academy here. Uh, we're really excited about the work that's being done in
009our science research academy. Uh, we've had, uh, just really enjoyed watching that program flourish and grow over the past several years. uh you know three years ago when uh we really began with the freshman class uh it has just continued to expand greatly and they're really doing some outstanding work. So we wanted to take a moment tonight just to recognize that work. Uh we have several of our students here to present. So I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Wyn's our executive director for curriculum instruction K to2 uh just to introduce them. Okay. All right. Uh so, um really I'm just so proud to have the students here today and I'm genuinely excited to hear what they have to share. Uh the science research program has a special piece of my heart. Um but
010I'm not going to talk too much. I do want to pass it over uh to Miss Christine Gil and Miss Casey Clark who's really going to show you the wonderful um assets of the program. Good evening everyone. Congrats to the student athletes. I know they're gone now, but huge accomplishments. It's incredible. Um I'm excited to introduce our dedicated science research teacher, Mrs. Clark, and the talented group of student researchers who will be presenting tonight. uh their hard work, curiosity, and collaboration have really brought this program to life. So, we invite you to enjoy their presentation, celebrate the innovative research they've accomplished. And without further ado, I'll bring up Mrs. Clark. >> Thank you. Thank you for giving me a microphone in the space to talk about science research. So, my husband's really excited. It's not
011him that has to listen to it tonight. Um, thank you. Uh, so if you can It's gonna be fun without a clicker. So the the goals of the program um really started with the the space to create you know extracurricular and supplementary science for students who were really interested. So um the program started before 2023 there was no during the school day program. It was entirely after school. So students were really competing with the clubs that they were involved in the sports teams that they were in and even you know jobs that they had after school siblings that they had to be responsible for. So in 2023 we started the actual during the school day program. Um and that was the freshman at the time that joined in that year. So we added one grade
012every year if they've moved up. So now 2023 it's built into their class uh for every single grade level and we have freshman through juniors that are currently in the program. Uh so the first year we had 16 freshmen in the official science research academy that was done during the day. We still had some leftover students that were in the after school program that were juniors and seniors at the time to help kind of, you know, fulfill their needs and phase them out. So, it was a total of 24 students. Last year, we had 18 freshmen. Uh we added 18 freshmen and kept uh 15 out of the 16 sophomores that started um and still had 10 extracurricular extracurricular uh students for the upper classmen. So, a total of 43. And then this year we're
013at 66 total uh because we've added 32 freshmen. And next year we're projecting about 80 students for all four years will be the first year next year which is really exciting. So the goals of the science research program are to give them the space and the skills necessary to engage in scientific research. So things that they wouldn't normally learn in the regular school curriculum. Uh the ability to conduct novel research experiments. Really it's whatever their heart desires that's the pathway that they can follow. And the ability to engage with the scientific community. So, one of the first things that we do as part of the program is um expose students to sharing and uh communicating their research. And we do that through a bunch of different symposia that they attend. So, the first one that
014they've done is the Brook Haven National Lab Science Scholar Symposium. And here to tell you about their experiences, Adrian's taken off his football jersey and joined us with the lab coat. And we have Marissa and Hannah as well to tell them what they did at Brookham National Lab. Good evening. My name is Hannah Roas. Um, we had the opportunity to work with Brook Haven National Lab and we were able to learn a coding lang language called Python. Using Python, we coded micro sensors to collect data on variables such as the temperature, pressure, and humidity around Was Public School. We now have a variety of different micro sensors. we are that are available for us to use in our own class for our own research. Thanks to a grant from the Toshiba American Foundation, we also
015use Python to analyze publicly available data sets as well. We were able to take data from NASA and coded to see patterns with global temperature changes as well. Um this year in May, we traveled to the Brook Haven National Lab for a symposium to um show everybody our work and we also met with other groups from all over Long Island to see their projects. So another program that our sophomores participate in is the Barcode Long Island program. Um it's run through Cold Spring Harbor Lab and the goal there is to examine biodiversity on the island. um and also really develop their biotechnology skills. So they work on the project proposals throughout the year. They carry out the experiments here at Wanto and then at the end it celebrates with a symposium at Cold Spring Harbor
016Lab. And we have Bat Como and Donovan Skelton to tell you about their experiences with the program. >> Good evening. So, uh, what we did is that we worked with Cold Spring Harbor and we looked at we, each group chose a specific variable and saw how and investigated how it impacted the biodiversity of a specific invertebra on Long Island. So, specifically for me and Donovan, we looked at how sunlight coverage affected the biodiversity of ants. And then at the end of the year in June, we presented our research at a uh, symposium at Klobring Harbor Laboratory. Um to get our results for our project, we first collected ants from a field that was half in sunlight and half in shadow. Uh that was in Wanau. And then once we collected the ants, we extracted their
017DNA uh amplified it using a polymerase chain reaction and then separated the DNA using gel electropharesis. And then this helped us uh decide which samples we could send off for sequencing and help us get results for the end of the project. Uh in 2024 there was one participating team. In uh 2025 there was uh five and next year in 2026 there are going to be six teams. So symposium are great for sharing and communicating information. there's a little bit less pressure, but we also like to compete. It's WA. Uh, and so there's no shortage of research-based competitions. And we start right away with the freshmen. Uh, the freshman start off with the Toshiba Explorer Vision competition. And this is where they have to propose a hypothetical technology that's grounded in actual current research and science
018to solve a problem that exists out there in the universe. And groups that score in the top 10% of the submissions are honored with an honorable mentions award. And um this year we have with us Alex, Juliana, and Jeffrey to tell us about their Diales project. That was an honorable mention this uh earlier this year. We model our product off of the Dexcoms that people with diabetes use, but instead of it monitoring blood blood sugar levels, we had it moni monitor potassium levels. The honorable mentions were the top 10% of projects submitted to the competition. The first year we had two honorable mentions. Then in last year we had four and then we hope to continue that as we go forward. And these are the groups that got honor honorable mentions last year. Moving on,
019one group that worked on road technology was working with mentors from outside. So these two mentors were expertise in road construction and they were from American public work association. They were able to get honored to lunchon for Long Island branch back in April. So, another um competition that we participated in last year was the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair, which is the local branch of ISF, which is the international uh parent kind of branch of that competition. Uh so, unfortunately, who couldn't be here tonight was Evelyn Caputo because she's too busy at Cornell. Um, but she last year came in third place in the animal science division for her research that was looking at how uh the milkweed toxins impact invasive lantern flies. Uh, and the good news is they actually kill them. And
020so she won third place in the animal science and she was also awarded a genius Olympiad award where she was invited to participate in an international symposium and then she also won the US Air Force award for her project as well. Uh and then we finished the year at Long Island Science Congress last year and that is a competition that serves uh both Nassau and Suffach County and then feeds into the state competition. Uh last year we had 10 students. Some of them competed as individuals, some of them as teams and that was at the Cradle of Aviation Museum. And here to tell you about her research experience there is Tanisha. >> Good evening everyone. I'm Tanisha Atwell. Uh I was lucky enough to participate in this competition. My research my research project was about
021how oyster are an environmentally friendly friendly water filters in our environment. It at the competition it was very fun to see so many different things as a topic range from chemistry, physics, biology, human anatomy and much more. uh in 2025 10 students participated in the Long Island Science Congress. Uh and two of them won the achievement award, six won the meritorious award and one was able to achieve honorable mention. There was also one person who won the Robert Nel Nelson Memorial Award and one chemistry division winner which went on to compete at the state science fair. As part of the science research academy, we have many opportunities to engage in hands-on experience. One of them includes monitoring oyster reefs that were installed installed in the creek behind Mand Mandandalay Elementary School as a joint project
022with the town of Ham Hamstead. These are some of the oyster that I used personally for my research project and we've been able to go as groups and look at the health of the reefs and even install new ones to continue to help improve water quality. So, not only that, every year we take the freshman to Jones Beach, so that way they can see some science in action right here in their own hometown. Um, and not only that, we have a lot of class projects lined up that Alisette and Luke would like to tell you about. Uh, as you've seen, everything in the class is project- based learning. So far, we've worked on our presenting skills, source evaluation, and real life data analysis. In order to do all this, we had to use a lot
023more advanced softwares than we would be learning otherwise. So, learning how to use that in freshman year is just great. >> I've also learned a lot of transferable skills that I can use in my other classes, like organizing my Google Drive, presentational skills, and bettering my use of Microsoft Word. I also really enjoy how you get to put your personal input into all the projects so you can really make it your own. Uh later this year we're going to be doing some more projects that will help us learn things like environment experimental design, team collaboration, and a little bit of scientific computing. This will continue to expand our knowledge of data analysis as well. >> Next, we'll be learning about linear regressions through um a Barbie bungee jumping experiment. And um we'll be learning about
024polymer chemistry through the creation of bouncy balls. Thank you. Um they because of the topics that they want to you know learn in science research we've pulled in some outside expertise to help us along in that journey. So so far we've had two guest speakers that have come back uh both years. So Al Domba is a local WA resident. He's a retired air traffic controller, but he now currently works with MIT to do research on improving air safety. Um, and Miss uh Sebastiano, our favorite high school biology teacher, her daughter Joanie is currently getting her PhD in cancer research. And so, she's come to talk about her work that she's done uh improving, I believe, ovarian cancer. And hopefully by the time that she comes back to see our students in May again, she will
025be Dr. Sebastiano this time around. Um, we've also had students start reaching out to uh outside professors and researchers that they can work with to help mentor them on their individual projects. And so, one of our students is working with Dr. Zerjinu who is from the East Texas A&M University. He's an expert in hydroponics and that's what she's interested in working on. And I have a group of five students that will hopefully be working with somebody from St. John's, but I don't want to put too much out there in the universe because she hasn't said yes yet. So, pending, I'll update you. Uh and not only that, so the science research program uh continues supports uh students with more academic opportunities and a big program here is obviously the AP capstone program and now science
026research will be AP research for our juniors who are continuing in that so they can still get their AP capstone diploma. Um and in addition to that, we've partnered with the University of Albany so students can receive up to 12 college credits for their work in science research starting sophomore year all the way through senior year. they have the ability to earn those as long as they have an external mentor. Um, but in the end, it's really just another place for kids who are having fun. So, we've created another space where it's a bunch of kids who can come together and share their interests and find other people who enjoy doing what they do. So, thank you for giving us the space to create this program here. Do you have any questions? >> All right.
027Thank you so much. >> I just want to thank all of you for being here. Really uh impressive update. I I thank you for all your uh all your work over the past couple years. Great to see the program to continue to expand. You know, going back several years and and kind of hearing the vision that we had for this, it's it's great to see it play out this way and to come to fruition. uh the work that all of you are doing really impressive and and we certainly thank Casey for her leadership and and all the great work she's doing with our students every day. So So thank you. Much appreciated. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Mr. Gre. >> Second favor. Motion. >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor?
028>> I have a motion. Second >> second. Item contractual organizations. It donations of education elementary We have a motion. All in favor? >> Item H. H >> move second. >> Second, >> Mr. President. motion. >> second. Good evening everyone. My name is Caitlyn Donnu. Our winter sports season has begun and our teams are putting in the hard work to succeed. Girls varsity basketball has started off the season strong by winning their first game and going undefeated in the WA tournament. We are so excited to see all of our teams excel for the rest of this for the rest of the season. Last week, we sorted through all of the items from our Thanksgiving food drive and the results were a huge success. We had an amazing turnout and we were able to provide every family
029in need with a turkey and various other items. The class of 2027 came in first place with the most items donated. And additionally, we are so grateful for the contributions made by every grade. The class of 2027 is currently hosting a clothing drive fundraiser that runs until December 10th. All of the money received from donations will go towards junior prom and you can drop items off in the main lobby. Additionally, the class of 2027 is selling want apparel and a portion of every sale goes towards the class. If you are in need of more want to wear, be sure to make a purchase through the QR code on their Instagram as the store closes soon. Want theater production of 166 Vine brought great results and engagement and we can't wait to see a musical the
030musical they put on in the spring. We celebrated World Kindness Day by encouraging all students and staff to wear blue while our Morgan's message and Cohen Strong clubs decorate the school with kind messages. Thank you and we hope that everyone has a happy holidays and a great new year. Good evening. We have our um upcoming events. Our holiday fair is next week. Um we have evening shopping on Tuesday, December 8th and Thursday, December 11th. So students looking forward to that. We also have our fifth grade clothing drive which is on Tuesday, December 9th from 400 pm to 7:30 in the Wanza l cafeteria. We also have New York Islanders game which is on Tuesday, February 3rd at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $65. Um, our beautifification committee is also collecting any um, gently used fall
031and holiday decorations to continue to decorate the outside of our school. We also have our next PTA meeting January 12th at 7 p.m. And just wishing everyone happy holidays. Thank you.