While some Long Island educators are discussing the Israel-Hamas war in class, others are not. Craig Schneider reports on Newsday.com that many parents say it’s imperative that schools talk about the war, considering the amount of misinformation going around. Students say it feels “weird” not to discuss it. Education experts say teachers are wary of this third-rail issue, having seen the attacks on teachers over controversies surrounding pandemic measures and parts of the curriculum. Gloria Sesso, president of the Long Island Council for the Social Studies, said the war, which has spurred demonstrations and a rise in antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiments, is simply too hot a topic for some teachers.
“I’m hearing it’s way too sensitive to have discussions in class,” said Sesso, a retired history teacher.
Sesso said the war can and should be discussed, if only by focusing on the geography and a timeline of the conflict's history "without taking a side." Early grades could focus on the geography, while middle- and high-schoolers could also look at the timeline, she said.
Long Island has 124 school districts and can theoretically have 124 different approaches to handling information on the Israel-Hamas war, said Alan Singer, a Hofstra University professor of education. Beyond that, individual teachers can choose what to focus on, as well, he said. The Board of Regents sets state education policy and has general supervision over all educational institutions, including elementary, middle and high schools across the state. But much of the specific instruction is left to individual districts and teachers, Singer said.
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The East End officially has a covered full-size ice rink. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that Peconic Hockey celebrated the grand opening of its domed rink at Veterans Memorial Park in Calverton Saturday with ceremonies and a ribbon-cutting attended by members of the New York Islanders organization, including the team’s first captain, Ed Westfall, for whom the Calverton rink is named.
Peconic Hockey Foundation President Troy Albert, the driving force behind the effort, told an enthusiastic crowd of supporters of the long, long journey that got the group to the opening of its “dream rink.”
The new $2.3 million rink in Calverton is open to the public.
The rink is inside a 125-foot by 225-foot inflatable dome.
It’s the only NHL-size rink east of L.I.E. Exit 58.
Go to www.peconicicerinks.com for more information.
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For more than 200 years, the Montauk Point Lighthouse at the very east end of Long Island has pulsed like a huge swirling star in a tall bottle. Now, in an era when ships can track their positions with ever more precise marine navigation tools, the lighthouse is a throwback.
So is the lens that has just been installed in the glass-walled lantern room atop the lighthouse. James Barron reports in THE NY TIMES that the lens is a huge, upright glass dish that spins on its edge and focuses the rays from an LED into a single intense beam. It turns six times a minute. It flashes every five seconds.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, flash.
The lens is not new: It is the very one that beamed light on the water around Montauk from 1903 to 1987, when the Coast Guard removed it. The replacements required less maintenance, but some Montaukers grumbled that they were dim.
“I would go there at night to take photographs of the lighthouse, and the lights on the outside of the building were brighter than the light in the tower,” recalled Mia Certic, the executive director of the Montauk Historical Society. The group owns the lighthouse, commissioned by President George Washington in 1792 as one of the new nation’s first public works projects and built by John McComb, the architect who later designed Gracie Mansion.
The lens — named after the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel — made its comeback a couple of weeks ago through a pilot program with the Coast Guard and the historical society. Over the next couple of years, the society will collect data for the Coast Guard about the lens, one of 50 in service at lighthouses overseen by the Coast Guard as official aids to navigation. Most of the work was paid for with a $100,000 grant from the Ludwick Family Foundation of Glendora, Calif. One of its trustees spends time in Montauk, Certic said.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s regulators are on the verge of settling a discrimination lawsuit alleging that the state favored convicted pot felons over disabled veterans in the awarding of licenses to sell legal marijuana. Carl Campanile reports in THE NY POST that the move would accelerate the opening of hundreds of cannabis stores left in limbo by the Empire State’s legal weed war.
The details of the proposed agreement weren’t made public, but the state Cannabis Control Board has called for an emergency meeting today to approve the settlement in the case brought by disabled vets Carmine Fiore, William Norgard, Steve Mejia and Dominic Spaccio.
The regulators are now also scheduled to settle a second, similar lawsuit filed in March by a coalition including some of New York’s medical marijuana companies that also claimed state officials exceeded their legal authority when they opened the initial application pool only to people with past pot convictions or their relatives, instead of to everyone.
The slow pace of the legal weed program has given illicit peddlers ample time to establish a big foothold — by setting up unlicensed shops that mostly do business in cash and don’t pay cannabis taxes that licensed marijuana dispensary stores must pay.
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Top Riverhead planning official Jefferson Murphree, who has been suspended since March due to town disciplinary charges, will be coming back to work — but with less responsibility.
Last week the town board voted to reinstate Murphree, 65, as charges of insubordination, incompetence and neglect of duty remain pending against him. Riverhead Town Board members also took measures at last Tuesday’s meeting to eliminate Murphree's responsibility of overseeing the building and planning departments.
Tara Smith reports on Newsday.com that in March, Riverhead Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar filed the disciplinary charges against Murphree, the town's building and planning administrator.
Murphree served an unpaid 30-day suspension starting in March and since then has been suspended with pay. Town payroll records show he collected a salary of $137,292 in 2022. He'll continue to take home his usual salary following his reinstatement.
Aguiar has alleged Murphree mismanaged the town’s comprehensive plan update, delayed building and planning work and was insubordinate after she told him to apologize to a Jamesport civic group for comments he made at a February 2022 forum.
Though disciplinary hearings usually are private, Murphree asked for his to be public.
“What they did was, without any warning whatsoever, with no progressive discipline, brought these charges, many of which are ancient — I mean, more than a year old — to force him out,” Murphree’s attorney, Gerard Glass, said of town officials in a recent interview. “He has a 25-year unblemished record as a municipal employee.”
The hearing is expected to continue in December, according to Riverhead Town officials. If the charges are upheld, a hearing officer could recommend a reprimand, fine, demotion or firing under Civil Service law.
