Valley Stream District 24 grieves loss of standout teacher

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Donna Lifman, a special-education teacher who taught in District 24 for more than a decade, died on April 21 after battling cancer for several years. She was 55.

“She was an inspiration to us, such strength and courage, patience,” said Mark Onorato, principal of the William L. Buck Elementary School. “I think the best word is just caring — caring for her students, for her colleagues … ” His voice trailed off.

Marijo Sensale, Lifman’s sister, who works at Robert W. Carbonaro Elementary School, helped her get hired in 2005.

“That was Donna’s joy — teaching,” Sensale said. “Donna believed in her students and felt there was nothing they couldn’t achieve. Donna’s students would always come back to visit, even after high school. That’s what kind of impact she had made on the children’s lives and her friends.”

Sensale said that Lifman started working with special-needs children when she was 15, when she volunteered with youth groups like Operation Fun. When her daughter Jessica was 3, Sensale said, Lifman started a preschool in Queens to make sure local children had a solid foundation once they entered kindergarten.

She worked on and off while she underwent cancer treatment, which her colleagues said is evidence of her dedication to teaching. Onorato said that the entire District 24 staff was “in awe of her.” Most recently, she worked with Chris Chruma’s fourth-grade class at Buck, but she had worked in all of the district’s schools.

“She wasn’t just a mother to her kids, she was everybody’s mother — even in the classroom,” Chruma said. “She just made kids feel safe.”

Chruma said that Lifman famously monitored attendance for “Fun Fridays” — a Friday-afternoon tradition in which students who were well-behaved that week would be allowed to take part in an extra activity.

Onorato said that Chruma and Lifman were a symbiotic pair — balancing each other’s strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. “I didn’t have to finish saying things sometimes; she would just kind of take over,” Chruma said.

He joked that there was occasional banter about their opposing baseball preferences — Chruma is a Yankees fan and Lifman was a Mets fan.

“I just wanted her to laugh,” Chruma said. “We would look at each other — I mean, I had her rolling sometimes, you can’t even imagine.”

Kelly Carr, a math specialist at Buck, said that Lifman “just wasn’t that teacher from 8 to 3, she was beyond that.” When she first started teaching at a school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Lifman is said to have taken care of students — many of whom were developmentally disabled — until their parents got home from work.

Carr said that despite her illness, Lifman was never late for work, and that she recoiled from special treatment. “At one point we gave her a designated [parking] spot and she got all annoyed, and we were like, ‘Be quiet,’” Carr said with a laugh. “It was like, right out the side door so she could just come in … and she was like, ‘I don’t need that.’ We were like, ‘Oh, just shut up.’”

David LeWinter, a fifth-grade teacher who worked with Lifman when she was first diagnosed, said that several former students attended her funeral. “Fifteen years after they have her, they still love her,” he said, adding, “She checked on every student she ever had.”

“That’s, like, the best thing,” LeWinter said. “If teachers can strike that great balance of having respect and [can] be loved but be tough — I don’t know if there was anybody better at it than Donna Lifman. I saw it firsthand.”

Grief counselors and school psychologists broke the news of her death to students and parents late last week, and arranged to attend to students who needed help dealing with the loss.

Carr said that the district’s small, family atmosphere helps it overcome difficult times. “We’re very family-oriented, and so we all kind of help each other out,” she said. “ … If they’re feeling bad or sad and need to speak to somebody, it’s not just the school psychologists or the counselors, I think the children feel comfortable enough to stop into anybody’s room and just talk with them.”

Lifman is survived by her husband of 26 years, Larry, and her children, Jessica, Zachary and Matthew, of Merrick; her mother, Maureen; and her siblings Marijo, Mitchell and Julie. She has two nieces, seven nephews and a grandniece and nephew.

“Donna always put her children and students first,” Sensale said. “She felt their was nothing they couldn’t achieve, and she made sure she gave all of herself to them.”