July 1 was Lorna Lewis’s last day as superintendent of the Malverne school district before she retires from her 47-year career in education. To celebrate her many accomplishments, she decided to leave one last impression on the district.
Working with the Village of Malverne, Lewis was able to procure increased classroom space for future students of the Malverne school district.
The school district accepted a generous donation from the village of two trailers that have been used as office space since 2010. When the Malverne Volunteer Ambulance Corps took over a garage from the village’s Department of Public Works, the trailers were established as a space for DPW employees to take lunches, breaks, store belongings and use as offices.
The ambulance corps was founded in 1968 to serve the community and moved into their headquarters in 2012. Though the ambulance corps is still active in the village, providing CPR and first aid to residents — in 2024 they ceased their ambulance services and no longer needed the garage. As a result, the DPW staff has now returned to the recently renovated office space, which was updated using grant money from former Assemblyman Brian Curran.
These trailers, which have little commercial value, offer increased space that the school district needed. Instead of letting these trailers go to waste or selling them, the village will give this facility to the district.
“We have a whole intergovernmental agreement between the village and the school district,” Malverne Mayor Tim Sullivan said. He explained that boards representing the village and the school district approved the exchange.
The village is giving the trailers to the school district at no cost, though the district is responsible for the costs of relocation and any renovations.
“There’s no cost to the village, but it also helps the school district,” Sullivan said. “So it winds up helping the taxpayers of the village in one way or another.”
The trailers will be relocated to Maurice W. Downing Primary School, where they will be renovated. The district plans to use this space as a STEM learning lab and a possible music room.
“We’ll have two learning spaces that will serve children well in the future,” Lewis said. “Right now those same activities are happening on a cart, which means the teacher pushes a cart into the classroom to deliver these lessons.”
Lewis remarked that right now the STEM offerings at Downing are stored in the library, with classroom materials in boxes. She compared this space to the Explorer Lab at Davison Avenue School, which is also a renovated trailer that has been used for STEM learning since 2018.
Once the trailers are moved to Downing, renovations will begin to form the two learning spaces. This includes redoing the floors and ceiling, painting the walls, adjusting the ductwork, and painting the outside of the facility. The two bathrooms currently in the trailers will remain for the students use and an accessibility ramp will be added to the outside.
“I think it’s great,” Senator Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, a Malverne resident, said. “We always talk about shared services and this is the key, it’s a great example.”
The district predicts the space will be available for students to use in October.
“We’ve worked really well together inter-governmentally, whether it’s a hard asset or a favor, and it has worked well for both the school community and the village at large,” Sullivan said to Lewis.
