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LONG ISLAND
A14
NEWSDAY / ALEJANDRA VILLA
Middle schoolers from Schechter School of Long Island joined Stop & Shop yesterday in donating
nonperishable Passover food to a Massapequa kosher food pantry. ] Video: newsday.com/nassau
Passover food
for kosher pantry
BY BART JONES
NEWSDAY, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2015
newsday.com
[email protected]
Middle school students and
supermarket employees joined
together yesterday to ready
1,000 pounds of kosher Passover
food for donation to a food pantry whose manager said the
goods will help Jewish people
who cannot afford the traditional holiday fare.
Matzo, grape juice, gefilte
fish, farfel and Passover cookies
were among $13,000 worth of
items that The Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. and students
from private Jewish and Lutheran schools assembled for the
Alix Rubinger Kosher Food Pantry in Massapequa.
The donation is “greatly appreciated and it’s greatly needed,” said Iris Astrof, head of the
all-volunteer organization run
by Congregation Beth-El, also in
Massapequa. “We’ve seen more
people come to our pantry than
ever before. Even though the
economy may be improving generally, for these people it hasn’t
improved.”
Rabbi Anchelle Perl of the
Chabad of Mineola noted that
the event, held at a Stop & Shop
in Carle Place, “highlights the
hidden need of food assistance
within Nassau County’s Jewish
community.”
Passover, which starts April 3
at sundown, is a weeklong commemoration of the Jews’ historic
exodus from slavery in Egypt
3,300 years ago. Many Jews
mark the major holiday with ritual-laden seders, festive dinners
that generally take place the first
and second nights of Passover.
It was the largest Passover donation that Stop & Shop has
made in its New York Metro District, which includes New Jersey
and southern Connecticut, said
Arlene Putterman, director of
community and public relations
for the supermarket chain. Last
year, the company donated
$5,000 worth of kosher Passover
food through one of its Queens
stores.
“Today is about giving back,”
Putterman said.
Students from Schechter and
Long Island Lutheran Middle
and High School, in Brookville,
brought nonperishable kosher
goods to add to the supermarket’s donation.
“Giving to people who are in
poverty is a good deed because
they don’t have anything and
they should have something to
celebrate Passover with,” said
Gillian Leeds, 11, of West Hempstead, a Schechter sixth-grader
who brought a matzo ball mix.
Sirena Winakor, 14, of Mill
Neck, said members of LI Lutheran Middle School’s Peace
Group participated partly to
show that people of all faiths
can help one another.
“I love that we are coming together, and I love that I’m helping all the Jewish people,” she
said.
Legis. Norma Gonsalves (REast Meadow), presiding officer
of the Nassau County Legislature, said, “Hunger is a problem
no matter what community you
live in, and it’s a problem yearround.”
Using a Hebrew word for a
good deed, she said, “We are
doing a mitzvah today.”
Brentwood’s
choice wants
kids to achieve
BY JOIE TYRRELL
[email protected]
Levi McIntyre, a retired administrator who had worked
for years in the Longwood
school district, has been
named superintendent of the
Brentwood schools — the Island’s largest district and one
of its poorest.
McIntyre, 67, a longtime
resident of the Brentwood district, starts as the new schools
chief July 1. He succeeds Superintendent Joseph Bond,
whose contract expires in
June. The board voted 4-2,
with one abstention, to approve McIntyre’s three-year
contract at $206,000 annually
at a special meeting Monday
night.
Board of Education president Helen Moss said McIntyre “is committed to the concept that all students can
learn and that there should be
no barriers that hinder their
academic progress.”
“As an instructional leader,
he established high expectations for all students and encouraged staff and students to
believe in this philosophy and
to be committed to the mission in work and performance, ” Moss said.
“I felt like I can make a substantial impact on improving
the academics in the district,”
McIntyre said yesterday.
“The schools in terms of academic performance need
help. I am able to work with
the staff and work with the
community to improve overall academic standards in the
district.”
Brentwood had a K-12 enrollment of 17,554 students in
2013-14, with 85 percent considered economically disadvantaged, according to the
JOHNNY MILANO
z
NEW CHIEF
SETS HIGH
GOALS FOR
STUDENTS
Levi McIntyre will lead the
Island’s largest school district,
which is one of its poorest.
New York State Department
of Education report card. In
2014, 13 percent of all students
in grades 3-8 scored proficient or above in English Language Arts and 18 percent in
math.
McIntyre received his bachelor’s and master’s from Indiana University and a doctorate from the University of
South Florida. He was born
and grew up in Jamaica,
where his father worked in a
sugar-cane factory. He said
he hopes he can serve as an inspiration for Brentwood students.
“I’d like them to hear this
message, that despite your
economic situation, if you
work hard and set your expectations high, you can achieve,
and I am an example of that,”
he said.
McIntyre was principal of
Longwood
Junior
High
School in Middle Island in
1993 and retired from that
role in 2014. Before that he
was an assistant principal at
Bellport High School.
In 2012, McIntyre was
named Administrator of the
Year by the Western Suffolk
Counselors Association. He
was credited with helping
Longwood to achieve a designation as a Rising School to
Watch by the New York State
Middle School Association.
He is also a member of Phi
Delta Kappa and the First
United Methodist Church in
Central Islip, where he is the
church organist.
While at Longwood, McIntyre filed a federal lawsuit
against the district in 2007 alleging discrimination on the
basis of race, age or sex. The
District Court ruled against
him and a federal appeals
court upheld that ruling in
2010.