By:Joseph Kellard
Breaking up a winning team is hard to suffer. But Oceanside schools will have to carry on without one of its integral components, Assistant Superintendent Linda Bruno, who is leaving to become superintendent of Southampton schools.
Enid D'Arrigo, princicpal of Boardman Middle School, is being called on to replace Bruno for at least the next school year.
Bruno came to Oceanside four years ago to accept the position of assistant to the then-newly appointed superintendent, Dr. Herb Brown. The two originally met 10 years ago in a doctoral program at New York University.
"We formed a study group," Bruno recalled, "and we worked well as a team. Herb is an expert in quantitative issues, with numbers and mathematics, while my area of expertise was with qualitative issues, with curriculum. Between the two of us, we worked very well as a team because of our opposite strengths."
At the time, Bruno was working in administrative capacities in the Half Hollow Hills Schools in Dix Hills. She worked there for 25 years, rising from elementary-school teacher and reading specialist to principal of an elementary school and middle school. She then found an opportunity to team up with Brown, again.
"When it was announced that he was going to be superintendent in Oceanside, I immediately applied for his former position as assistant because I knew we would work well together," Bruno said.
Among the programs Bruno cited as her most important accomplishments are the implementation of full-day kindergarten; a new center that included an orientation program for parents, parent handbooks, curriculum and class-size guidelines; Foreign Language Elementary School, which involved introducing Spanish in kindergarten and adding one grade each year until sixth grade; Study Skills, a three-year plan for students in grades 3-8 to learn time management, note-taking, test-taking and research, and Natural Helpers, a program involving students in grades 7-12 that is part of the district's violence-prevention program.
"She's really been part of all the decisions I've made over the past four years," Brown said about Bruno, "including full-day kindergarten, foreign language, lowering class size in elementary school, improving reading programs and achieving dozens of goals over the past four years in the district, such as changing the math program in the elementary school. We began with an understanding that we needed to change the math program and she worked with me on deciding what program to use and she trained teachers on how to use it."
Bruno announced she was leaving the district after D'Arrigo had announced in January that she was going to retire. With D'Arrigo available to step right in, at least on an interim basis, Brown said he never had to advertise for Bruno's position.
"When Mrs. Bruno told me she was leaving, I offered Mrs. D'Arrigo the assistant superintendent's position," he said. "She accepted it and has been appointed by the Board of Education for one year."
For 17 years, D'Arrigo has been the principal of Boardman Middle School. After retiring from this position, she considered possibly teaching new principals how to cope with what she calls the "high-pressured" job of being a school principal. Then Brown called her with an offer to keep at least part of the team intact.
"I was pleased that he and the Board of Education thought I could be of service in this capacity," she said. "I was flattered and saw it as an opportunity to serve a district that treated me and my children well. Retirement is not an easy change, and I turned my life around in making this decision to become assistant superintendent. But I thought about it and wanted to do it."
D'Arrigo said she believes her new position is only a one-year deal, a hiring basically to assist in a period of major administrative change.
"A year in educational terms is really too short a term for me to set an agenda and make any significant changes," she said. "I see myself in a mentoring position, continuing the programs that Dr. Bruno implemented and helping in the transition of a new assistant superintendent."
D'Arrigo began her career in 1965 as an elementary-school teacher in Brooklyn. Three years later, she moved to Oceanside and became a sixth-grade math teacher at Boardman. Within a year, she left her job to raise her children, but continued to take an administrative course as an unpaid intern.
In 1978, she returned to teaching, first at the Wilson School in Rockville Centre before returning to her position at Boardman. She spent two years at that job and landed an administrative-intern job at School 8. From 1982-83, she was project director at the middle school, and in '83 was appointed principal.
"I think my major accomplishments were the transition we made between junior high school and high school in this school district," she said in regard to changes made in 1984, when the high school began admitting ninth-graders into its building, based on demographics. "We have also created an environment over the years where our teachers and students stay together for two years. This was based on a university's research on long-term relationships with middle school."
About D'Arrigo, Brown said, "I chose Enid because for 17 years she's been a leader in instruction and curriculum, which is her strength. She's up to date on all research, she's an avid reader of educational journals, and she is looked up to by other principals in this area. "
And, the departing Bruno said of D'Arrigo, "She's a strong leader, who has the respect of her peers."
