In the coming weeks and months, local school districts will be planning their 2016-17 budgets, deciding how to allocate their pieces of that very large pie. It’s our right to have a say in how that money will be spent. more

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a saying: “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” For King, service to others was the highest form of humanity. more

Kennedy High School junior Claire Kelly spent three weeks last summer at the University of Chicago, delving deep into the human brain, examining the connection between impulsivity and drug addiction. Senior Rachel Mashal, the class of 2016 salutatorian, put fruit flies on a restricted diet to determine whether lower food intake would ward off drug addiction — specifically caffeine addiction — while also extending life. (As it turn out, it did both.) And senior Alexis Tillman hung out on lonely street corners (with either her mom or dad nearby) for weeks, filming homeless panhandlers to determine what, precisely, might persuade charitable passersby to give them loose change or even a dollar or two. more

This fall six Hofstra University graduate journalism students visited Hempstead High School weekly to teach members of the newspaper club about how to write news and feature articles and to introduce … more

The drug addicts’ brain scans that Dr. Stephen Dewey takes appear in psychedelic shades of red, yellow, green and blue, each indicating a level of brain activity — or inactivity. Red means excited. Blue is dormant. Dewey is the laboratory director for behavioral and molecular neuro-imaging at the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. In that capacity, he’s put hundreds of addicts’ brains to the test — the positron emission tomography test, that is — seeking to understand precisely what happens to the mind when a pot smoker lights up or a heroin junkie shoots up. And, he has found, it isn’t pretty. more

Kennedy High’s Homecoming was ablaze with school spirit, on and off the football field, last Friday. Homecoming festivities were held at the school, which takes in students from parts of … more

Children, teachers and staff members at Harold D. Fayette and Old Mill Road elementary schools welcomed special guests from the New York State Education Department on Sept. 29 after they achieved Reward School status. more

“Remember, you are the future.” Douglas Smestad repeated this affirmation daily to the hundreds of students he taught for two and a half decades in history classes at Calhoun High School, … more

By all accounts by Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District principals, opening day of school on Sept. 1 went off without a hitch. more

Playing catcher, Josh Levine, of Merrick, crouched low on the first-base side of home plate, ball in hand, preparing to tag out a runner trying to score from third base. Suddenly he realized that the runner was charging at him at full speed, lowering his shoulders as if he were readying to tackle him. Levine’s heart was racing. more