Rockville Centre's Best Buddies celebrate Halloween

South Side High School's Best Buddies celebrated Halloween a few days early — on Oct. 26 — with a costume party at the Rec Center.

The turnout, according to Best Buddies President Lindsay Levine, was enormous. Between 175 and 200 people dressed up for the occasion, which featured a disc jockey and food for everyone.

“It was wild,” said Levine. “The amount of people was not expected. All the kids dressed up.”

Founded in 1989, Best Buddies is a nationwide organization that creates one-on-one friendships between students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and typical students. South Side High School started its own chapter of Best Buddies just last year, and it currently has 150 members.

“There’s been tremendous growth,” said Lindsay. “We started from scratch and received so much help over time.”

She said that South Side High School’s chapter of the organization has 35 buddy pairs of students and disabled partners.