Serving New Hyde Park, North New Hyde Park, Herricks, Garden City Park, Manhasset Hills, North Hills, Floral Park
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Friday, December 9, 2016
Vol. 65, No. 50
N E W H Y D E PA R K
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HOLIDAY GIFT & PARTY GUIDE
RICE BACKS PEIREZ ELECTED TO G.N. ED BOARD PELOSI OPPONENT
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Herricks voters OK spending for buildings $25M bond, $3.3M from reserves approved 676-165 BY N O A H MANSKAR
PHOTO BY STEPHEN TAKACS
Santa Claus holds a girl at the Village of New Hyde Park’s annual Christmas tree lighting on Saturday.
Herricks school district voters on Tuesday approved most of the spending for a $29.5 million package of building projects that district officials say will transform Herricks schools. Residents voted 676-165 to approve a $25 million bond and $3.3 million in spending from a capital reserve fund, allowing the district to move forward with planning for the multiyear initiative affecting all seven of its buildings. Voters will decide later whether to spend the other other $1.2 million in reserves, which the district has not yet saved.
The wide margin of victory for the spending referendum indicates residents agree the district’s aging buildings need long overdue repairs, Nancy Feinstein, the Herricks school board president, said. “Everyone is in agreement that our students are phenomenal here, and they just need some facilities to support them, to bring them into this century,” Feinstein said. About 60 percent of the work is “health and safety” fixes at the district’s five schools, the Herricks Community Center and Shelter Rock Academy, including new asphalt, sidewalks, doors and locks, handicap accessibility renovations and ventilation improvements.
The 68-year-old Herricks High School would get about 50 percent of the work, including major renovations to the cafeteria, athletic field, track and one science lab. A new fitness center would also be built near the school’s front entrance. The district will now finalize a timeline for the work and set priorities for construction, Feinstein said. A timeline for submitting plans to the state Education Department, which has a monthslong backlog in its plan review office, will be key to avoiding delays, district officials have said. Some work, including construction of the new athletic Continued on Page 72
Attack on NHP woman prompts outrage B Y N O A H M A N S K A R the name of Republican President-elect Donald Trump has prompted widespread outrage A racist attack on a New and calls for unity amid a recent Hyde Park woman last week in spike in hate crimes.
Yasmin Seweid, 18, was waiting for a subway train in Manhattan last Thursday when three men started accosting her, shouting Trump’s name repeatedly and calling her a terrorist, using an obscenity, she wrote in a Facebook post last Friday. When Seweid and the men boarded the train,
they approached her, ripped the straps on the bag she was carrying and tried to take her hijab, or religious scarf, off her head, according to Seweid’s post. Others on the train looked on and did nothing. “No matter how ‘cultured’ or ‘Americanized’ I am, these people don’t see me as an American,” Seweid wrote. “It breaks
my heart that so many individuals chose to be bystanders while watching me get harassed verbally and physically by these disgusting pigs.” The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the attack, but police have made no arrests, Newsday reported. Seweid and her family did not Continued on Page 73
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