The Wheatley School has changed since Arthur Engoron graduated in 1967, he said.
Nearly all Wheatley students were white then, he said, compared to 84 percent in the 2013-2014 school year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
There’s also now more pressure on students to be involved in extracurricular activities, get good grades and go to good colleges, said 1969 graduate Lynn Greenbaum, whose two children went to East Williston schools.
But she and Engoron said Wheatley’s commitment to “progressive” education has not changed in the 60 years since its founding — a commitment alumni will celebrate at its 60th anniversary weekend this October.
“There was a lot of room to learn and grow, and it was very important to me that my children have a good education as a parent,” said Greenbaum, an East Williston resident. “That’s what you want most, and I just wanted them to have the opportunities that I had.”
The Wheatley School Alumni Association is expecting around 1,000 people to gather at the Old Westbury high school from Oct. 14 to 16, about the same number that came to commemorate Wheatley’s 50th anniversary 10 years ago, Engoron said.
Engoron and Greenbaum are planning the 60th anniversary celebration with fellow alumni Jeanne Messing Sommer, class of 1961, and Marianne Lamitola Downey, class of 1963.
Wheatley’s progressivism manifests differently today than it did when Engoron was a student, he said.
For example, students today aren’t receiving bomb threats for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance in school, he said; but they are active in clubs such as the Gay-Straight Alliance.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the quality of the teaching and students’ personal connections to their teachers, Greenbaum said.
“If there’s anything that my kids came away with (it) was there were some teachers that really inspired them, that really encouraged them to grow and to take risks, and that’s great stuff,” she said. “That’s great life stuff, because the courses we took didn’t necessarily teach us about life. They taught us about how to get good grades, but there was a piece of Wheatley that did teach us about life.”
Over the 60th anniversary weekend, alumni will reunite with their individual classes and gather at meals with graduates from throughout Wheatley’s history.
Current Wheatley students will be invited to the main anniversary ceremony and a series of career panels featuring alumni in fields from law to farming and baking, Engoron said. Current students have also gotten involved with planning the celebration through social media, he said.
Interacting with the high-schoolers allows alumni to stay connected to their roots at Wheatley, Engoron said: “They can learn from us and we can learn from them.”
Greenbaum said she hopes the career panels will show students that they don’t have to go into “traditional” fields such as medicine or law if they want something different.
“You can really have a different kind of a career and still feel very fulfilled,” said Greenbaum, an independent advertising contractor.
Engoron said he is expecting people from as far as California and Arizona for the weekend. It’s not unusual for alumni to travel far, he said — an Australian exchange student once came back to the school for a class reunion.
The reunions are a way for graduates to connect with their younger selves and people they knew and didn’t know in high school while maintaining their adult wisdom, Greenbaum said.
“I think the things that we thought of in high school, the judgments that we made — people change, and people who were scared of people were able to come up to them and change it, hear it, make it better, not have the same trepidations or feelings, because everybody’s adults now,” she said.
Wheatley alumni can register online for the 60th anniversary celebration at wheatleyalumni.org/paypal_options for $70 by July 30, $75 between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30, and $85 after that. Former and current administrators, faculty and staff can attend for free.
