The Great Neck School District is continuing its anti-hate education, with faculty returning from a summer trip to Poland and bringing back what they learned for further education on the Holocaust.
Superintendent Kenneth Bossert said the district has made strides in anti-hate and anti-bias curriculum and is seeking to continue that momentum.
“This work towards acceptance and equity has no end date, has no completion point,” Bossert said. “This is work we will remain committed to, work that we will remain engaged in.”
Bossert called Great Neck a “lighthouse district” in its offerings of Holocaust education, something he said the district takes pride in.
North High School Principal Dan Holtzman, Hebrew language teachers Hanna Bokhour and Yamit Nassiri attended a tour by Name Not Numbers, a Holocaust remembrance organization, in Poland over the summer.
The three presented their experience to the Board of Education Wednesday night.
Holtzman shared highlights of the tour, including visits to former concentration camps, which he said elevated his understanding and will help him better teach students about it.
“I know what it smells like in Auschwitz, I know what it smells like in Birkenau, I know what the walls of Majdanek feel like,” Holtzman said. “It doesn’t even compare to the experience, and I’m not trying to intimate that, but from an education perspective – to be able to talk about it raises that experience of teaching and sharing this knowledge to a whole other level.”
Nassiri echoed the impacts of the educational trip.
“It’s not like looking at these pictures in a book or online or watching ‘Schindler’s List,’” Nassiri said. “This is being there on the ground where people were being tortured, where they were being humiliated, where they were being dehumanized.”
Other highlights included seeing a locked Torah scroll in a synagogue, where Holtzman found the cover had been donated by Rabbi Yaacov Lerner of Young Israel of Great Neck.
“It was just an unbelievable moment to know that Great Neck is always with us,” Holtzman said.
Holtzman said the district is working to expand its partnerships and bolster its anti-hate education even further.
A student-led community-wide event will be held on Oct. 7 to unite the community a year after the attacks in Israel.
“It gave me great sense of pride to see the journey that’s been taken in a very short period of time, and it gives me hope that as we look out going forward that not only our district will benefit from the knowledge and collective experience of our own community, but that we will share that with others and help augment the voice of others across this state at a bare minimum,” BOE President Grant Toch said.
The Board of Education also discussed its annual goals for the current school year.
Bossert said some of the goals are continuing from the prior year whereas some are new.
Based on the input from each board member, Bossert compiled the goals into a draft before being accepted by the board.
The board goals will be voted on for adoption at the next meeting on Oct. 8.
Goals include enhancing student achievement, community unity and engagement, preparing for post-graduation and a focus on student well-being.
Toch said the goals illustrate a commitment to communication, transparency, a one-district approach, student life preparedness and continuity in student experience across schools.
“All of these goals address the whole child, the whole student – who they will be, not just their academic goals but as well as their wellness emotionally, physically and intellectually,” Board Vice President Donna Peirez said. “To me that was a very important part of what we were setting forth on this year.”
The district is also seeking to establish new committees to address curriculum, budget advisory and legislative lobbying to bolster informational and engagement needs that Bossert said the district and surrounding community are seeking.