With an eye on revitalizing Valley Stream’s commercial district, the village board joined forces on Oct. 19 with the Buxton Company, a Texas-based firm that analyzes market trends and consumer buying habits to develop retail economic strategies. more

It got a little messy at the Hendrickson Park administration building last Saturday morning. Fortunately, that was the plan. more

Children who are legal residents of Valley Stream District 13 and will be 5 years of age on or before Dec. 1, 2010, are eligible to register for kindergarten for the 2010-11 school year. more

The District 30 community honored five people on Monday night who give countless hours to the schools. To mark Board of Education Recognition Week, the PTA recognized the top district’s top decision-makers. more

The Henry Waldinger Memorial Library has officially upgraded. After hosting five weeks worth of early child development and parental education seminars last year, the village’s library has earned the designation of a Family Place Library. more

For the second straight year, school districts are facing the possibility of a midyear aid cut as Gov. Paterson seeks to plug New York state’s deficit. more

After women are diagnosed with breast cancer, they often start looking for a support group that could help guide them through the next steps of recovery. The Wednesdays Twins are one such group at 1 in 9’s Hewlett House. more

Kathleen Rice ascended to the district attorney’s post four years ago as a virtual unknown -- a former federal prosecutor and Brooklyn assistant district attorney who had never run for political office before. Back then, she appeared a tad unsure of herself, slightly nervous in her interviews with the Herald. And why not? She was opposing the legendary Denis Dillon, who had served as Nassau County district attorney for 31 years. Despite being a political neophyte, Rice ran a strong campaign, and was elected with 51 percent of the vote to Dillon’s 49 percent. Four years later, we’re happy that Rice was elected. She has proven herself to be a consummate professional who only improved an already well-run D.A.’s office. Cases are processed nearly twice as fast as they once were. Conviction rates are up. And Rice has garnered a national reputation for her aggressive stance against driving while intoxicated. Many now call her the toughest DWI prosecutor in the country. more

It’s hard to argue with a track record like that of Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat from Glen Cove. Over the past eight years, he took a fiscally mismanaged, virtually insolvent county and turned it around, consistently balancing a budget that seemingly could not be balanced. Suozzi saved money by cutting the county work force by 1,000 employees and instituting tried-and-true management practices that were previously nonexistent. At the same time, he has put in place a host of programs to improve residents’ quality of life, from smoking-cessation regimens to energy-efficiency incentives. more

Central High School senior Marcelle Little Dawes recently learned that she has been awarded Pace University’s Homer S. Pace Medal that recognizes students with high SAT and GPA performance, perseverance and motivation. more