The Manhasset School District held its annual retirement dessert ceremony last Tuesday for 12 teachers and employees in the Manhasset High School cafeteria.
The ceremony was emceed by Anthony Ambrosio, the district’s administrator for the arts and human resources, who introduced board of education members and union leaders in their parting remarks to the retirees in addition to the administrators who were chosen to talk about the relationships they cultivated with the retirees throughout the years.
The retirees include district clerk Carol Catanzaro, clerk typist Mildred Barrientos, special education administrative assistant Judith Cowie, senior stenographer Louise Hurley, science teacher Marie Kussman, school psychologist Sheri Lindner, physical education teacher Vincent LoBianco, clerk typist Roseann Miller, Shelter Rock Elementary School teacher Denise O’Brien, music teacher Sean Quinn, Munsey Park Elementary School teacher Nancy Reisman and school monitor Attilio Valla, who combined have 428 years of experience within the Manhasset School District, board of education Vice President Regina Rule said.
Manhasset students Typpher Yom and Sandra Baskin provided the ceremony’s introductory musical entertainment, performing the 1878 Pablo de Sarasate violin composition “Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs), Op. 20.”
Manhasset Superintendent of Schools Charles Cardillo thanked the retirees for their years of service and said they should look back with pride.
“Take advantage of each and every day over the next few years,” Cardillo said. “I hope you look back and see that your memories here are happy memories, whether they were happy memories when you worked with your students or when you worked with your colleagues, things that you take from here that give a sense of happiness that you’ve contributed to your district.”
Rule said she grew up in a neighborhood without a strong public school system, and was at first hesitant to believe her husband, a Manhasset alum, who would speak highly of the district and the quality of education it provided him.
But her opinion changed, she added, when her family moved to Manhasset and she saw the level of commitment and pride that the district’s employees and teachers had in living up to the reputation Manhasset has developed.
“It’s bittersweet to say farewell, so we just share your excitement that you’re taking on a new chapter in your life and we wish you the best as you rediscover what you wanted to do when you grew up, because now you have the opportunity to figure out what you wanted to do when you grew up,” Rule said.
Edward Vasta, president of the Manhasset Education Association, said tough it was bittersweet to see the colleagues he’s grown to care about retire from the district, it is up to the district’s employees to maintain the high standards by which the retirees worked.
“We miss you and we think this place, the place that you started working in before I did, which has been the best place I’ve ever worked, look behind to those of us and say please keep that tradition going,” Vasta said. “Despite what the world thinks about us or New York State or the governor or the commissioner of education, you know that our brothers and sisters in the administration and the board of ed and the staff unit and the administrative unit and the teachers want to pay it forward.”
