Long-term Teachers, Staff, Board Member Leaving District

Rockefeller Awards Go to Julie Mauskop & Seth Moore

by Judy Silberstein

( June 15, 2005) Mamaroneck School District is losing some its most senior staff members due to retirement. Leaving this year is Don Phillips, who is retiring after an amazing 45 years of teaching Social Studies and English at both the Hommocks and the high school, where he also served as coach for various teams, including tennis and bowling. Mary Jane Feleppa (Mamaroneck Avenue Elementary School) is retiring with more than four decades of service (44 years). School psychologist Larry Broder is retiring after 37 years, and five other teachers are leaving after more than three decades: Maureen Esposito (35 years; 6th grade); Joanne Shapoff (35 years, Chatsworth); David Miles (32 years; Chatsworth); Wayne Pollak (30 years; Hommocks); Marion Davis (31 years; Chatsworth).

The Mamaroneck School Board is also losing its most senior member, April Farber (in photo at right), who is stepping down after three terms, one more than anyone has served in recent memory. In a final address she thanked the Committee for the Selection of School Board Nominees for setting aside its historical precedents to endorse her for a third term in 2002, as it had already done in 1999 and 1996. Her first year on the board coincided with the arrival of Superintendent Sherry King, who is also retiring this year.

On Tuesday, June 13, the board paid tribute to its retirees and also recognized two high school seniors who were singled out for their artistic talents and selected for this year's Rockefeller Art Fund Awards. The award for visual art went to Julie Mauskop, who even at the beginning of her art career at the high school was "someone very special," according to art teacher Kevin Klein in a presentation of her work. "What distinguishes the work is her exquisite sensitivity to the formal qualities of each piece," he commented as he displayed examples from her wide-ranging portfolio. Julie will continuing her art studies at the Rhode Island School of Design.

	Work by MHS senior Julie Mauskop, winner of the MHS Rockefeller Fund Award for visual art.

The award for performing arts went to Seth Moore who has been in "as many PACE productions as he could possibly be in" said Rachel Madris, another MHS senior student and director of the last play he performed in. She introduced her fellow-student, describing him as an "incredibly versatile actor and really giving when he's on stage."

Seth Moore, winner of the Rockefeller Fund Award for Perfoming Arts this year, delivered a monologue from "This is Our Youth."

The art awards are a long-running tradition in the district - one that is not retiring this year. Twenty-three years ago in 1982, Mamaroneck High School was the only comprehensive high school among the ten schools selected for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Awards in Arts Education Program – a new award presented that year by David Rockefeller, Jr. and discontinued after five years. Most schools took their $10,000 award and immediately spent it, reported MHS art teacher Jon Murray, who started at the high school in 1978, even before the advent of the award.

“What we decided to do was invest that money so we could continue honoring the student work that earned us the award in the first place,” he explained. And that’s why students like Julie and Seth are still receiving cash awards financed by the $10,000 check from long ago.

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