At the orientation held prior to the opening of the Great Neck Public Schools, new staff was welcomed by Board of Education Trustee Susan Healy, Superintendent Dr. Teresa Prendergast, Assistant Superintendents Dr. Joseph Hickey and Dr. Stephen Lando, new Great Neck Teachers Association (GNTA) President James Daszenski, new Association of Supervisors and Administrators (SAGES) President Sharon Applebaum and other administrators.
Heather Sweet, the new assistant principal at E.M. Baker School, replaces Jeffrey Ryvicker, who was recently appointed school superintendent of the Quogue School District.
New teachers include:
Douglas Kuveke and Lisa Noonan for special education, Stephanie Schmidt and Kimberly Sieh for grade 4 and Melissa Weibman for grade 5 at E.M. Baker School.
At J.F. Kennedy School, Christine Deaner, Kristen Milici, Vanessa Nilsen and Kelly Rosario, all for special education.
Barbara Manzi for special education at the North Shore Hebrew Academy and Mary Terriberry for prekindergarten at Parkville School.
At Saddle Rock School, Rachel Barrer for reading, Jennifer Kerr for speech therapy as well as at North Middle, and Deanna Phillips for special education.
Thomas Hahn for English at North High.
At North Middle School, Melissa Block for Languages Other Than English (LOTE), Alexandra D’Angelo for special education, Jennifer Kerr for speech therapy as well as at Saddle Rock, Jeryl Lehmuller for special education and Tracy Segal as the guidance department head.
Morgan Burk for physical education/health, Lillian Hsiao for English as a New Language (ENL) and Daniel Shadock for mathematics at South High School.
At South Middle School, Yanxia Chen and Sandra Neuwirth for LOTE, Jessica Hemmerdinger and Lindsay Manno for special education and Catherine Sagevick for mathematics.
If my eyes are correct, there are 35 new teachers in the picture, only 9 of them are men. the other 26 are women, isn’t that an unequal hiring process? I also do not see any new hires that are African American.
The men are stuck to the back of the picture and me to seem like they are shown as second class citizens.
Shame on Great Neck School district for doing this. There appears to be a definite bias in the hiring practices and this coming from a school district that speaks of diversity and inclusion but not when it comes to hiring teachers? it screams of hypocrisy.
To respond to Jim, most of these photos are not taken with the intention of placing males in the back. It typically deals with aesthetics of stature–height, not gender. Also, diversity is not defined as black/African American and “Other”. From what I heard, there was quite a bit of diversity, including Asian, Persian, Chinese, and various forms of racial diversity including biracial candidates. Because you cannot see “black” does not determine diversity. Therefore, your “eyes” do in fact deceive you.