I grew up in Yaphank, a 14-square-mile hamlet in Suffolk County, virtually in the middle of Long Island. (The community to the north is, in fact, called Middle Island.) I remember . . . more

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

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

Sheila Horowitz Cohen was a woman of fierce determination, who was very much like the little engine that succeeds in pulling a train over a mountain in the children’s book “The Little Engine … more

Nassau BOCES installed former East Meadow School District Superintendent Dr. Robert Dillon as its new district superintendent at a board meeting on Aug. 20. more

Dr. Robert Dillon, the East Meadow School District’s superintendent from 1999 to 2007, has been tabbed to become the superintendent of Nassau BOCES. more

The Freeport Public School District Board of Education voted to reelect Michael Pomerico and Anthony Miller to their posts as president and vice president, respectively, and also introduced Ernest J. … more

Jake Thomas and Alex Vargas, both 21, played baseball together in 2011 at Calhoun High School under legendary coach Joe Corea. In 2010, Thomas led the Colts squad that captured the Nassau County Class AA title. In 2012, Vargas played a critical role in the Colts’ victory at the Long Island Class AA championship. Major League teams recently drafted them both. more

Who would have thought that the Independent U.S. senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, would so quickly close the gap with presumed 2016 presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton? more