Rockville Centre's Best Buddies celebrate Halloween

About 125 buddies, peer buddies, parents, siblings and staff celebrated Halloween — and each other — on Oct. 18 at the Recreation Center, in the third annual costume dance that brought together participants from Best Buddies clubs in South Side High School and South Side Middle School.

On hand to celebrate the pairing of special education students with their regular education buddies were club advisors Rob Devlin, Gina Peck, Holly November, Marisa Buckley, Mariann Vogel and Bill Busch from the high school, and Trish Beaumont from the middle school.

“Friendships were formed,” said Vogel, who added that there was plenty of great food, dancing and desserts at the party.

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 in 2009, and it currently has 150 members. Vogel said that South Side High School’s chapter of the organization has 30 peer and peer buddies pairs. Heading up the high school club this year are Brendan Farrell, Dana Yberg, Adam Moss, Chris Harkins, Brian Hutchinson, Brian Beaudet, Caitlin Schwagerl, Raquel Palmas and Nicole Cronley.