At Newbridge Road School, a celebration fit for 100 years of history is on the horizon

Newbridge Road School, in North Bellmore, will mark 100 years next month — a monumental milestone that is deserving of a celebration as special as the occasion. A year and a half of planning by an anniversary committee will culminate in a daylong event on May 3 that will encourage students and staff, as well as former staff and alumni, to reflect on what Newbridge Road means, and has always meant, to the North Bellmore community.

Uncovering a slice of North Bellmore history

Over the past two decades, Newbridge Road has celebrated its 80th and 90th anniversaries, and many of the documents that were uncovered during the preparation for those celebrations were vital in planning the event next week.

A schoolhouse that once stood on what is now the front lawn of Newbridge Road was built in 1908, the same year the school district was established.

“We had a lot to work with,” Lynda Brust, a third-grade teacher at the school who attended Newbridge Road as a child, said. “There are Rubbermaid tubs of documents that go back to the formation of this district in 1908. We have the minutes of the first-ever Board of Education meeting — the minutes that declare that 76 members of this community decided to create a unified school district, which is awesome.”

The front façade and the main section of Newbridge Road were built in 1924, and co-existed with the 1908 schoolhouse for a few years, before it was destroyed in a fire. Over the years, extensions were added to make Newbridge Road into what it is today.

“The material was definitely there,” Brust said. “It was just a matter of going through it, and making sense of it, and putting it in chronological order.”

Festivities on May 3

The school’s 100th celebration will kick off with a parade around the grounds on the morning of May 3, Principal Amanda Licci said. Families will be invited to watch the parade, and students will don 100th-anniversary T-shirts, purchased for them by the Parent Teacher Association.

Afterward, they’ll watch an opening ceremony, and Licci will speak. Past principals will be in attendance, the school band will perform, and the entire school will sing “Happy Birthday” to the school.

Students will also watch a slideshow on the history of the school, and then gather in their classrooms, where they will take part in activities focused on the celebration.

“One of the things that we’re really excited about that they’ll be going to is Centennial Hall,” Licci said. “We’re transforming our gymnasium into a museum, and there are so many projects going on in that.”

Centennial Hall will feature artifacts from the past. “We have old typewriters, going back to the ’40s, computers and education equipment that’s kind of considered outdated now,” among many other things, Brenda Adgrana, a third-grade teacher who has taken part in the event planning, said.

The hall, as well as a Centennial Native Garden on the school’s front lawn, which technology teacher Michael Bevilacqua and sixth-grade students created, will all be stops for classes throughout the day.

The school day will conclude with a dance party that will take students through the decades — featuring music from the 1920s, all the way through today.

For families of current Newbridge Road students who are interested in seeing Centennial Hall, it will be open from 3:15 to 5 p.m. after dismissal.

Newbridge Road has always had 'HEART'

Newbridge Road School operates under the motto “HEART,” Licci explained, which stands for honesty, empathy, acceptance, respect and teamwork. What has been remarkable to see as the school prepares for its centennial is that while the educational system has certainly changed over the past 100 years, the mission of teachers has stayed the same.

“Our core values were really the same back then, so woven through the decades,” Brust said. “We have really stayed true to our core values as educators, as a school community. That is really very powerful.”

“How you educate may change,” Licci added, “but truly, what we’re trying to accomplish here is the same.”

On the wall outside Newbridge Road’s main office, the school’s Beautification Club painted a tree trunk. Throughout May and June, students will be invited to paint their handprints on the wall, representing leaves. This “roots” them in the celebration, Licci said.

“It is really important for them to understand we’re not just coming to school wearing a T-shirt on this day — there’s a reason we’re celebrating this,” she said. “It’s our school. It connects us all. A hundred years is hard for any of us to wrap our heads around. So, particularly for students, we’re trying to bring a little bit of understanding to the significance of that. We are a part of this history.”