Herricks Chairperson of Social Studies Anthony Cillis said the subject’s curriculum is some of the best on Long Island in the district during his yearly presentation Tuesday night. 

Cillis, who has been in his role since 2020, explained progress reports on how social studies has evolved in recent times through grades K–12 between elementary, middle and high school.

Specifically, he said that Herricks High School is currently in great shape and exemplified by national and state awards, elective course participation and success on college-level Advanced Placement Courses.

For the elementary schools, CIllis said he held workshops with staff to better understand how the subject matter was going to be taught in light of new state standards in 2017. 

“One of our plans was to try and get all of the elementary teachers and talk to them about what your intention is and how are we moving forward with grades K–5 elementary social studies education.”

Cillis acknowledged that social studies could not be taught every day due to the importance of math and science at younger ages while admitting some teachers may need help teaching because “elementary school teachers need to be experts at everything.” To compensate, Cillis said department officials helped put together a fluid document of standard lesson plans on a number of topics that any teacher can view and tweak to how they see fit if need be. 

In Herricks Middle School, Cillis said they are bringing back a writing program that the district suspended the past two years in light of COVID-19.

From sixth to eighth grade, different projects include research papers with a thesis, counterargument and bibliography, depending on the grade. For the same grades, there’s a language immersion that involves learning about social studies in Spanish class, for example. 

“This program makes us very different than other schools,” Cillis said. “And I will admit that we have suspended that in the last because you wanted to make sure that our kids were able to come back and be able to handle school in general and not worry about too many things but we were bringing it back next year.”

Because of the district’s efforts, Herricks received a $30,000 grant from Stony Brook University for their news literacy program in order to expand it into younger grades and introduce the curriculum to more Long Island schools, Cillis said.

In high school, students have to write separate research papers from grades 9 to 12 that encompass roughly 50 pages, Cillis said. In order for seniors to graduate, they must pass their Participation in Government course which entails a PiG project. The project involves a research paper, civic action project or community service and an understanding of school budgets. The lengthy assignment, Cillis believes, has done a great job of keeping the students engaged late in their senior year, when many are emotionally checked out. 

Over the past three years, social studies have had the most enrollment compared to English, math and science classes, according to district numbers. 

For AP placement exams, social studies have had 43 percent of the tests taken in the district from 2020-2021, the most in the high school.

“I don’t think there’s a district on Long Island that offers as many social studies courses as we do,” Cillis said. “We offer the most AP classes of any discipline and they’re all well attended.”

Board President Henry Zanetti held a moment of silence for Ty Patrick Flood, the Herricks High School senior who recently passed away. Flood, 17, had Duchene Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic disorder and muscle disease that progressively debilitates the patient and requires the assistance of a wheelchair for most. 

The next meeting for the Herricks Board of Education will take place on Thursday, May 5.