Residents in the Huntington school district will be able to choose from four candidates for three seats on the board of education.
Incumbents Christine Biernacki and Lynda Tine-D’Anna will go up against newcomers Thomas Galvin and Theresa Sullivan, according to the district’s website.
Christine Biernacki
Biernacki is completing her second three-year term on the board and was elected by her fellow trustees to serve as board president for the 2020-21 school year. She and her husband live in Halesite with their two children who are in high school.
A partner in a New York City law firm, in addition to her duties with the BOE, she is president of the district’s PTA council and has served on the Safety and Shared Decision Making committees and on the Special Education Committee.
She has served as president of both the Town of Huntington’s Youth Bureau board and of the Huntington Sanctuary Project’s advisory board and has offered her house as a host home for the project’s runaway youth.
Lynda Tine-D’Anna
Lynda Tine-D’Anna
A lifelong resident of Huntington, Tine-D’Anna is completing her first term on the school board.
She and her husband have two children who attend district schools, and two daughters attending college.
The candidate is a world language teacher in the Syosset school district and is a member of the high school steering committee for the National Blue Ribbon schools of excellence application process, chair of the district’s Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation and evaluation committee and is a founding member of the high school’s professional development program.
She has also been a board member and volunteer of the Huntington school district Special Education PTA, and is the founding member and former president of a local nonprofit focused on advocacy and education.
Thomas Galvin
Thomas Galvin
Galvin and his wife, who graduated from Huntington High School, moved from New York City to Huntington nearly 20 years ago. They have two children attending school in the district.
The candidate is New Hyde Park Memorial High School’s social studies chairperson and a representative on his district’s diversity task force. He also has coached soccer at the YMCA and the Cold Spring Harbor-Huntington Soccer Club and helped create the high school’s Model U.N. program. In his free time, he performs in a band.
Theresa Sullivan
Theresa Sullivan
A 1992 graduate of Huntington High School, Sullivan works at her family’s Huntington village salon and was recently appointed to the town’s small business task force. She and her husband have two daughters in the district.
She created Huntington Hospital Meals during the pandemic, and her work was recognized by town Supervisor Chad Lupinacci (R) in the TBR News Media May 2020 article, “Who local leaders are thankful for helping during pandemic.” The initiative helped deliver thousands of meals for medical professionals and staff at the hospital during the initial weeks of the pandemic and also raised more than $150,000.
Budget and voting information
According to the Huntington school district’s website, the estimated tax levy increase for the 2021-22 budget is 0.33 percent, with a budget increase of 2.48% to $139,315,854.The district will receive state aid of $22,166,741, according to the district’s projections.
Residents will also have the opportunity to vote on a capital reserve proposition. If the proposition receives approval, it will permit funding for an estimated $3.525 million in projects and will have no effect on taxes.
Projects include partial roofing replacement at Huntington High School, parking lot renovations at J. Taylor Finley Middle School and the replacement of two original building boilers at Jefferson Primary School.
The budget vote and BOE elections will take place May 18, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Huntington High School located at 188 Oakwood Road.
The Eagle banner at Hauppauge High School. Photo by Rita J. Egan
By Chris Cumella
The Hauppauge school district board of education election and budget vote is set to take place on Tuesday, May 18. It will feature four candidates vying for two places hoping to represent the best of the hamlet and its educational values. The three-year term starts July 1 and ends June 30, 2024.
With BOE trustee Stacey Weisberg deciding not to run for reelection, the candidates are as follows:
Megan Asseng
Megan Asseng
Megan Asseng works as an assistant vice president for Northwell Health. She moved to Hauppauge with her husband a decade ago and happily settled into the small-town atmosphere.
“It was a very tight-knit community and thought it would be the best place for our children’s education,” Asseng said. “I have a vested interest in assuring that Hauppauge’s school district succeeds because my children will be there too.”
COVID-19 had forced many traditionally in-person meeting formats to be on remote collaborations, and schools have been no exception. Asseng believes that because of COVID, there will be a rocky transition back into even more full classrooms from online ones. Her platform revolves around creating effective plans for children to adapt once again to face-to-face learning environments.
By working collaboratively with the school administration, teachers, parents and students alike, Asseng is hoping to incorporate diverse ideas from her community and rehabilitate a sense of communication that she says the school district needs.
“I am a firm believer that education is the key to our children’s success,” she said. “The board of education is where those decisions will start to set our children up for that success.”
Colleen Capece
With her husband and four sons, Colleen Capece has lived in Hauppauge for over 15 years. She’s special projects coordinator with Suffolk County and has worked for a Wall Street law firm.
Envisioning success in the youth of Hauppauge is a pedestal of Capece’s campaign as she upholds a need to strengthen the means of communication between the board and the school administrations.
“There’s a little bit of a frustration from people because they feel as though their voices are not being heard,” Capece said. “We want to have a community where you can be able to voice your concerns and always find answers.”
Additionally, she has proposed a partnership with local organizations and corporations, allowing leniency for internships or mentorships with rising high school seniors as an incentive to “provide an avenue for graduation.” She emphasized the importance of a student heading out into the workforce today and how their real-world experiences will demonstrate their abilities and growth.
Shifting her experience from that of a parent to an advocate of all children is a specialty that Capece says she can utilize if elected. Doing so would allow her to give back to the community that she says has provided so much for all children in the district.
“I listen, I empathize, I want to listen to problems and work through them with others,” she said. “We must give all of our children the opportunities that they need to be successful.”
Gemma Salvia
For Gemma Salvia, being the principal of Seneca Middle School in Sachem school district has been a rewarding and enriching experience that she loves to do every day.
“This is part of who I am,” she said. “It’s what I know, and it is what I love.”
Spending some 25 years in Hauppauge with her husband and two children has allowed Salvia to identify the educational system in the district and pinpoint what seems in need of improvement.
In her platform, Salvia explains that being a community member allows her to see issues through multiple lenses, as a parent and an educator. She attributes both perspectives being in the best interests of the district’s students. Having spoken to many students in her time, she recognizes that it is difficult to see students’ struggles accurately unless there is an open and friendly dialogue between staff and students.
Salvia credits being transparent and accountable as assets when it comes to potentially becoming a board member. Bringing multiple views to new developments is an active step toward a more progressive and successful outcome for those attending or working in the school district.
Michael Buscarino
Six-year BOE incumbent Michael Buscarino could not be reached for comment before press time. He has lived with his wife in the area since 2005 and they have five children. After a brief career with NYPD, he joined Suffolk police and is now a sergeant with the county police academy.
Residents of the school district can cast their votes on May 18 at Whiporwil School at 495 Hoffman Lane in Hauppauge between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The area could soon have its own rage room — a creation designed for destruction. The local concept was conceived in 2019 by Michael Hellmann, who hopes to start up Rage Room Long Island.
A vacant storefront on Middle Country Road could be on its way to becoming the latest attraction that Selden has to offer its residents and visitors alike. The last hurdle for Hellmann and his crew is obtaining a permit from the Town of Brookhaven. Doing so will solidify their place in the Selden Plaza and create a therapeutic stress release for all who enter.
“We started this project two years ago,” said Hellmann, a Holbrook resident. “It is definitely an intense workout if you want it to be— you can break a picture of your ex, you can make it whatever you want.”
Derived from Japan, the first rage room opened in 2008, known as The Venting Place. It was created in the wake of the nation’s Great Recession, putting stressed-out workers, students and people from all walks of life in an environment where destruction was therapeutic. Since then, over 60 venues are operating in the U.S. and rising, according to Hellmann.
He said that his premises would include two sizable rooms accompanied by a third, larger room designed for parties and other big groups. Once a waiver is signed, a mechanical arm will hand you a weapon of your choice to arm yourself with —including crowbars, sledgehammers, golf clubs and even pipe wrenches.
“Michael is very creative and is looking at the latest and most innovative methods,” said Michaela Pawluk, social media manager of Rage Room LI. “When you go to other rage rooms, you are just destroying things, but the way that he created it and designed it — it is an entire experience.”
Participants are equipped with thick coveralls and a face shield for bodily protection from the bits of cutlery, furniture and technology scattered throughout a room during their allotted time ranging from 15-30 minutes. For the larger room intended for parties, audiences will have access to larger objects to unload. These include an industrial humidifier and a 4-foot Xerox machine right out of an attorney’s office.
Recycling is the name of Rage Room LI’s game, and Hellmann and his team play strategically when scouting the town’s curbs for discarded objects large enough for further destruction. Once a customer is finished with their session, the leftover scraps are recycled once again in an environmentally conscious effort to avoid sending them to a landfill.
“We are literally getting things off the street,” Hellmann said. “We have a Rage Room LI van, and we drive around the neighborhoods to collect junk off the curb. We love finding things that are technologically based.”
A rage room is designed to be used in any way that customers see fit — from an outlet to unleash anger to a venue for birthday parties. Rage Room LI is attempting to break the stigma around the danger of rage rooms. One of their most significant priorities has been to facilitate a safe environment where people can let endorphins flourish and have fun.
To get up and running at the request of over 900 eager participants via email, Hellmann is seeking a permit from the town to register his business. All town board members have expressed interest in introducing Long Island’s first rage room, except for one hesitant councilmember concerned of misuse or bringing in troubling individuals.
Rage Room LI has seen support from a petition on Change.org to open shop that has garnered 586 signatures as at May 12 out of a goal of 1,000. Aside from the signatures, the purpose of creating the petition was to show local and neighboring residents that it is a worthwhile cause. It is a continuous effort which Pawluk encourages anyone who is interested to add their name to the petition to emphasize community solidarity.
Envisioning opening day leaves Hellmann and his crew optimistic that their business will make a tremendous splash in Selden. Rage Room LI is shaping up to succeed from the positive community feedback, project plans and potentially a permit at its side.
“At some point, people break things whether they want to or not,” Hellmann said. “We are just expressing positivity, that is mainly the goal.”
Leg. Kara Hahn during a press conference at the Arthur Kunz County Park in Smithtown on May 11.
Photo by Kimberly Brown
By Kimberly Brown
Suffolk County deputy presiding officer, Kara Hahn (D-Setauket), officially launched Tuesday the Park Stewardship Program, where community volunteers are selected to oversee local parks that do not have staff.
County nature trails are in need of assistance as illegal dumping and vandalism are often discovered on the paths where local residents take their daily walks.
“The responsibilities of the stewards would be to pick up trash and to notify the parks department if there is vandalism or dumping,” Hahn said. “We’ve had very high profile dumping issues, so it’s good to have eyes and ears on the ground.”
The stewards are also encouraged to help with signage to assist local residents with navigating through the trails.
Hahn said it is important to create more signage to help residents such as mothers with children to ensure they know how far the trail is to reach a particular scenic spot.
Photo by Kimberly Brown
County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga) expressed his gratitude for Hahn’s program, as his involvement in preserving Long Island parks dates back to 2006 when he won support for the transfer of the 365-acre former Kings Park State Hospital property to New York State parks department.
“This is very near and dear to my heart, I walk through here regularly,” he said. “This is the kind of thing that starts off small but may develop into a group where we can raise money so we can make improvements to the park.”
The falling of trees throughout Long Island trails since Hurricane Sandy in 2012 has been continuing many years later. The president of Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference, David Reisfield, has taken it upon the Greenbelt organization to remove hazardous trees on trails that caused concern for residents. “This, to me, is the best thing,” he said. “We go out every Tuesday and cover three to four miles of trail, but the more volunteers the better. I could not be happier.”
According to Hahn, stewards are not expected to cut down trees but are welcomed to use clippers for branches that may cause blockages on the trails.
“It’s important that people get to go out and experience this, and sometimes a candy wrapper or a water bottle can mar that experience,” she said. “So, having stewards that are there to help pick those up is a good thing.”
If community members are interested in becoming a part of the Park Stewardship Program they can visit the county’s parks website at suffolkcountyny.gov/departments/parks and sign up online.
The Commack school district is in the midst of adopting a new budget for the 2021-22 school year. The revised budget reduces the planned tax increase from 1.99% last year to 0.99% and establishes funding allocation for the district with a 2.69% budget-to-budget increase. There will be a budget hearing this Thursday, May 6, with a final vote on Tuesday, May 18.
Along with the new budget vote, incumbent Jarrett Behar will face off against longtime Commack resident Gustave Hueber for a spot on the Commack school district board of education.
Jarrett Behar
Jarrett Behar
A board member for six years, Behar has put an emphasis on keeping tax rates low while also focusing on ensuring a smooth transition back to in-person instruction.
“We will continue to run the board in a fiscally conservative manner to ensure that students can achieve the futures that they want while keeping tax rates low,” he said in a phone interview.
While currently serving as the vice president of the board, Behar has resided in the Commack school district for 15 years. In an email, he touted his lengthy experience, as well as his extensive community involvement.
“That wealth of community involvement allows me to understand the concerns from all corners of Commack,” he said. “I am able to listen to ideas and concerns from a variety of different sources and advocate to the district administration on behalf of our community.”
In his personal life, Behar is a practicing attorney. A partner at a Hauppauge-based law firm, Certilman Balin, he graduated from New York University School of Law in 2000 and served as the competitions editor on the NYU Moot Court Board student academic journal.
He has children attending Commack schools, a major reason for his candidacy.
“I have two children in Commack schools and more than anything, I want them and all children in my hometown to receive a top-quality education,” Behar said. “I truly care for this community and its residents, working hard to serve our people in one capacity or another for almost a decade.”
Gustave Hueber
Gustave Hueber
The challenger, Gustave Hueber, is also an active community member.
After graduating from Binghamton University and Queens College, Hueber began his 34-year career in education that includes being a school psychologist, assistant principal and, currently, principal of The Three Village Academy — an alternative high school in the Three Village school district.
Hueber has a long history in Commack. Having resided in the district for 22 years, he has had three kids go through the Commack school district, with his youngest graduating high school in 2020.
“All three received an excellent education at Commack and were well prepared for their college experience,” he said in an email.
Throughout his time in the district, he has been a coach for Commack Little League, PAL football and basketball at Christ the King CYO in Commack. Hueber attributes this experience to his children being active in sports.
Like his opponent, he has put an emphasis on reopening schools. However, he is critical of how Behar and other board members have handled their reopening plans.
“The reopening plan, which was proposed and implemented during 2020-21 by the current BOE members and the superintendent, was a disappointment to many,” he said. “After closing school last spring for almost four months, their reopening plan continued to leave students sitting home every other day since September, with no plan to have them return.”
He said that neighboring school districts dealing with a similar situation to Commack were able to return to five-day-a-week instruction while others returned to full instruction for the spring semester.
Another plan he hopes to implement is an alternative school program, which is similar to the one that he currently spearheads at The Three Village Academy. The program is aimed at kids who deal with a variety of issues such as depression, anxiety and bullying.
“The kids in my experience get along great with one another,” he said in a phone interview. “They all have stories to tell, and it’s just a great environment.”
He believes that his insight will provide an invaluable perspective on a school board where educators are sparse.
“The people on the board are lawyers, engineers and that’s great, but my 34 years as an educator means I know the questions to ask,” he said. “The way I see it is if I wouldn’t support something as a parent, why would I advocate for it as a board member? A lot of the time there’s a lot of emphasis on how something can be done without thinking about the consequences.”
The budget and board of education votes will take place May 18 at Commack middle and high schools from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Suffolk County Police 2nd Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that killed a motorcyclist in Huntington this May 14.
Joan Petrosino was driving a 2010 Hyundai northbound on Deer Park Road, when she made a left turn into Wendy’s, located at 1210 East Jericho Turnpike, at approximately 1 p.m. and her vehicle was struck by a southbound 2018 Suzuki motorcycle.
The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene by a physician assistant from the Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner. The motorcyclist’s identification is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. Petrosino, 65, of Dix Hills, was not injured.
The vehicles were impounded for safety checks and the investigation is continuing.
The Kings Park board of education race has four candidates vying for two seats at large. Incumbents Diane Nally and Kevin Johnston will be on the ballot May 18 along with newcomers Clayton Cobb and Cynthia Grimley.
Both Cobb and Grimley were inspired to run after they and other parents were discontented with the reopening process in September as Kings Park secondary school students returned to the classrooms five days a week in person later than younger children. While the school year began with a hybrid model, with students attending school two days a week and taking classes remotely the others, the return to buildings the entire week for middle and high school students didn’t occur until a few weeks ago.
All candidates agree that an upcoming summer program in the district will be beneficial to ensure that students have an opportunity to fill in any learning gaps or deal with any emotional or social problems caused by the pandemic.
Clayton Cobb
Clayton Cobb
Cobb has lived in the district for more than eight years. He and his wife have three children who were homeschooled temporarily during the pandemic but will be returning to the classrooms in September. The vice president of an information technology consulting firm said that before the schools were shut down in March of 2020, he wasn’t familiar with BOE dealings, and then he started paying attention.
He said he believes that his IT experience can help in providing new solutions, and his business experience would also be an asset to a board position.
He said the district’s response during the shutdowns and the return to the classrooms wasn’t handled properly. It wasn’t until parents pushed back after a survey was sent out and parents rallied that the BOE took them seriously. Cobb said the board members weren’t tenacious enough with getting all students back to school full time in person. He added he felt they should have studied and researched the data more.
“You have to be forward thinking, proactive,” Cobb said. “You have to do research. You have to look at other counties, look at other states, look at the districts in other counties. You assemble, gather and assimilate information and come up with a solution and keep fighting for it.”
Cobb added that it’s important in cases such as this to bring up any legal aspects and harmfulness to the students even to state and county officials.
He said he felt at times the board was too quick to dismiss new ideas, and with his business background he said he understands how taxpayers are the same to the district as a customer is to a business.
“The whole point of this board and the school district is us,” he said.
Cynthia Grimley
Cynthia Grimley
A Kings Park resident since 1988, Grimley graduated from Kings Park High School and is raising her two daughters in the district.
Grimley holds a degree in psychology and education. She started her career as a special education teacher for six years and then moved on to higher education in 2003 where she worked at Suffolk County Community College. She is currently employed at Stony Brook University where she is a testing coordinator for the Student Accessibility Support Center.
While Grimley said she thought about running for the board of education before, she never felt a need to do so until now.
“I just feel that this year was difficult for everybody,” Grimley said.
She added that because she works at SBU she saw how another educational institution proceeded after the pandemic forced shutdowns. According to Grimley early on in March 2020, SBU leadership found a way to connect with students, even though she said higher education systems are different, she said she felt there should have been more connection with the students in Kings Park by teachers.
Her older daughter went a long time after the shutdown before hearing from teachers, and Grimley said she addressed her concerns about both daughters’ education to the BOE members, even though she said she was understanding that the district wasn’t prepared to teach via Zoom
“I kept going to board meetings and I said, ‘Why is this OK with anybody?’” Grimley said.“Why is this OK with the principals, with the administration, with the board, that there are children who haven’t had any connection with their teachers for weeks?”
Over the summer she became part of the reopening committee. She said she was vocal about there being a return to five full days and also a remote option. She said she felt not much changed in the new school year with sixth- through 12th-graders still following a hybrid model, and it was frustrating to see other schools returning full time early on. She added many on the board don’t currently have children in school.
“I just think that the board members didn’t have kids in the schools and didn’t realize,” she said. “We saw the kids suffering — the parents who have children — and saw the kids. The second my kids went back to school full time, it was like two new kids. It was like a light switch, both of them.”
Working in higher education in disability services, Grimley said she knows it’s hard to compare the two, but she feels her work experience, especially working with special-needs students, can be an asset to the board.
“I have a lot of background about accessibility, making education accessible for all and universal design and that sort of thing, so I feel like I bring a unique perspective to the board,” she said.
Kevin Johnston
Kevin Johnston
A resident of the hamlet for nearly 35 years, Johnston’s two children graduated from Kings Park High School in 2007 and 2010. The student-teacher supervisor with SUNY Oneonta has a background in education including being a former teacher, coach and adviser in the Kings Park school district from 1981-2015.
Johnston is completing his second term on the board. With issues due to the pandemic, he said it was important to run again due to financial constraints with the district possibly not getting state funding this year.
Johnston said one thing that will help financially is that the district just received money from winning a lawsuit from a case which was going on for nearly 10 years.
“We feel we have a lot to do, especially concerning loss of learning and the mental, social, emotional needs,” Johnston said.
He added in addition to a program implemented for this summer to deal with loss of learning, next year it’s important to look at more staffing for academic intervention and for standard social, emotional needs.
He said the district has to make every penny count as they don’t have chair people, and don’t have a level of checks and balances that other school districts with bigger budgets have.
“So, we do scrutinize the entire budget process, very carefully,” he said. “Make sure that there is no fluff.”
He said recently an opponent asked what are the wants versus the needs of the district.
“We’re just trying to meet the needs of the students,” he said. “We don’t have an agenda. We don’t have a special list of wants or wish list.”
Diane Nally
Diane Nally
The current board president has lived in Kings Park for more than 60 years. In addition to her three children being graduates of the high school, she has a grandchild starting kindergarten soon.
In 2016, Nally retired as assistant director of religion education at St. Joseph’s. If reelected, this will be Nally’s fourth term on the board, and she said she would like “to continue to improve the school district and maintain the progress we have achieved over the last nine years.”
Regarding the full return to school, she said the board acted accordingly saying the timing was “spot on” due to the decreasing number of COVID cases. She said a plan has been introduced to address learning loss and social emotional learning. The program will begin this summer.
“Our current school board acted responsibly by ensuring that the health and safety of all our students and staff were our number one priority,” she said. “We continually sought updated guidance for bringing all students back to school five days a week, which we did last month.”
Nally said her more-than-25 years with St. Joseph’s provide her with valuable experience working with parents and children to resolve issues. Her nine years on the board she said has enabled her to form relationships “with members of other school boards and with members of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.”
Nally said she is an advocate for small class sizes. She said this made it possible to bring grades K-5 back to school five days a week in the beginning of the school year. In September 2019, a one-to-one device program was introduced in the district. It was originally expected to take a few years before middle and high school students had devices.
“In response to the COVID pandemic, the board, superintendent, administrators, teachers and staff worked collaboratively to accomplish this goal by September 2020, which made it possible to run our hybrid and remote learning platforms,” she said. “With the increased state aid we received, we were able to set a tax levy of 1.99%, the lowest in years, while maintaining all current curriculum, programs and activities. As a responsible school board member, I am always mindful of the impact of tax increases on our community.”
Budget and voting information
Kings Park School District residents will vote on a 1.60% budget increase and 1.99% tax levy increase for the 2021-22 school year.
The budget vote and trustee election will be held Tuesday, May 18, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Kings Park High School back gymnasium, 200 Route 25A, Kings Park.2021-
Katherine Liang of Paul J. Gelinas Junior High School with the bridge that earned her first place in BNL’s annual Bridge Building Contest
Sometimes the term building bridges takes on a more literal meaning.
David Liang of Ward Melville High School placed second in the bridge building contest.
The Office of Educational Programs (OEP) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory announced local students who earned the top spots in both the2021 Bridge Building Contest and 2021 Maglev Competition during an online awards ceremony on April 16.
Each competition, held virtually this year, offers students a hands-on opportunity to apply math, science, and technology principles as they design and build bridges and magnetic levitation cars.
“Conceiving, designing, and building the one-of-a-kind facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratory takes extraordinary vision on the part of our scientists and our engineers to advance our science mission,” said OEP Manager Kenneth White.
“These two competitions test the design and analytical skill of contestants to create bridges and vehicles to exacting specifications and performance expectations much like our facilities demand of our staff. We hope some of these contestants will be our staff one day to take on another engineering challenge supporting extraordinary discoveries.”
Bridge Building Competition
Victor Prchlik of Ward Melville High School took third place in the bridge building contest.
In the annual Bridge Building Contest, high school students became engineers competing to construct the most efficient model bridge out of lightweight wood. Efficiency is calculated from the bridge’s weight and the weight the bridge can hold before breaking or bending more than one inch. The higher the efficiency, the better the design and construction.
Dedicated Brookhaven Lab staff engineers and technicians tested 40 qualifying structures during a live online event on April 8.
Katherine Liang, a 9th grade student of Paul J. Gelinas Junior High School earned first place with a bridge that weighed 18.7 grams, supported 38.6 pounds. The bridge earned an efficiency of 936.29.
For some students, a trial-and-error process was key to solidifying a design. Liang said she built and tested five bridges by weighing them down with a bucket of sand before submitting her final winning structure.
Second place went to David Liang of Ward Melville High School, whose bridge weighed 19 grams, held 36.4 pounds had an efficiency of 868.98.
Victor Prchlik, also from Ward Melville High School, placed third with a bridge that weighed 23.7 and supported 44.5 pounds with an efficiency of 851.87
Jonathan Chung of Smithtown East High School won this year’s Aesthetic Award.
“The whole process was fun from start to finish,” Chung said. “One of the most challenging parts was getting the glue to stick the wood together. I ended up solving that problem by using a hairdryer to dry it.”
This year’s Bridge Building Contest Aesthetic Award went to Jonathan Chung of Smithtown East High School, pictured with physics teacher Dr. Gillian Winters.
Brookhaven Lab staff tested magnetic levitation cars built by students from Island Trees Middle School and Bay Shore Middle School to see who came up with the fastest design.
MAGLEV Contest
This year’s Maglev Contest for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students included two main categories for speed and appearance. Brookhaven Lab staff tested 21 maglev cars for speed on a fixed gravity track–13 of which reached the finish line.
Brady Leichtman of Bay Shore Middle School won first place in the speed category.
Second place went to Isabella Rouleau of Bay Shore Middle School. Jesse Bonura of Island Trees Middle School placed third and also won the top spot in the competition’s appearance category with a futuristic blue car. Bay Shore Middle School students Amber Marquez and Andrea Romero, placed second and third in the appearance category, respectively.
Brookhaven Lab staff tested magnetic levitation cars to see who came up with the fastest design. Bonura found that part of the fun was testing and reengineering the maglev’s design. “We’d make it quicker and test it over and over again to make it perfect,” Bonura said.
The maglev contest is based on research by two Brookhaven engineers, the late Gordon Danby and James Powell, who invented and patented maglev technology—the suspension, guidance, and propulsion of vehicles by magnetic forces.
Magnetic properties give the maglev trains their extraordinary capabilities for speed and stability. These same principles—using magnetic forces to move matter — are used in world-class research facilities at Brookhaven Lab, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) — which are both DOE Office of Science user facilities. Magnetic properties allow the machines to move particles at nearly the speed of light for research purposes.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport will celebrate Astronomy Day on May 15 from10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Astronomy educators will perform earth science and astronomy demonstrations free for visitors with admission to the museum.
“Although the planetarium theater remains closed, we are happy to be able to share these Earth and space science toolkits with families,” said Dave Bush, director of the Reichert Planetarium.
“This is yet another opportunity to explore, learn and have fun while visiting the museum. [Saturday’s] event at the Vanderbilt is part of a nationwide celebration of educational programs designed to engage audiences in the awe-inspiring fields of Earth and space science,” he said.
Enjoy exciting science, take-home materials, and engaging discussion about science and society. Participants will make clouds, create nebula spin art, investigate Moonquakes, explore craters, and much more! These fun activities introduce guests to the ongoing research happening at NASA in the fields of Earth science, planetary science, and astrophysics.
This week’s shelter pets are Pudding and Ritz, two 10-month-old cats rescued from a cat hoarding situation and now up for adoption at the Smithtown Animal Shelter.
These two babies are best buds and prefer to go to a home together. Due to the large volume of cats in the home, they had very little human interaction. They are slowly learning to trust people, but remain very shy.They are more brave when they are together! Pudding is a long hair black and white male. Ritz is a short haired orange tabby female. These lovelies would do best in a quiet home that has lots of love and patience to give!
They are spayed/neutered, microchipped and are up to date on their vaccines.
If you are interested in meeting Pudding and Ritz, please call ahead to schedule an hour to properly interact with them in a domestic setting, which includes a Meet and Greet Room.
The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. Shelter operating hours are currently Monday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Sundays and Wednesday evenings by appointment only). For more information, call 631-360-7575 or visit www.smithtownanimalshelter.com.
Christine Biernacki
Colleen Capece
Gemma Salvia
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