Newsday (New York)

As weather began warming several weeks ago, Wyandanch school Superintendent Sherman Roberts grew increasingly upset at the sight of teachers casually clad in denim and spandex.

Compared to double-dipping school superintendents whose combined salaries and pensions exceed a quarter-million dollars, Bob Feger's compensation is modest.

But Tassone, 61, needn't worry about having enough spending money for the prison commissary. In spite of his conviction for stealing $2.2 million from the school district, which put him behind bars for 4 to 12 years, Tassone can count on his annual New York State pension of $173,495 arriving at regular intervals in his bank account. He gets that in monthly installments of $14,457.92.

Hunderfund said he deserves the compensation, saying, "I think I earned every dollar I received."
Retired Commack superintendent and current Malverne schools chief James Hunderfund has a pension of $316,245.

On Mohammed O. Sheikh's first weekend on campus at St. John's University, he did what most new freshmen do. He went to Mass.

Federal agents subpoena two dozen school districts
A slew of federal agents ranged out over Long Island yesterday hand-delivering grand jury subpoenas to more than two dozen school districts as part of an investigation into possible double-dipping by attorneys employed by some of the districts, according to school officials, attorneys and sources.

Long Islanders interviewed Thursday by Newsday expressed mostly outrage about Lawrence Reich and other private attorneys who have been listed by school districts as employees, enabling them to earn state pensions, while their law firms were also being paid fees by those districts.

A small-town law firm founded in 1937, Ingerman Smith grew into a legal powerhouse, representing more than one-third of all the school districts on Long Island and racking up millions of dollars in fees.

SUNY Old Westbury requires a 2.0 to live in dormitories. SUNY Old Westbury has removed 87 residential students from their dormitories for having grade point averages below 2.0, enforcing a policy that appears to be the only one of its kind on Long Island.

When they won the team prize in a national math and science competition earlier this month, Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff became instant celebrities -- not only for their tuberculosis research, but because of their gender.

The number of Long Island public schools on the state's low-performance lists has jumped sharply, and it includes two schools that are under the state's direct supervision.

Children exposed to World Trade Center dust are at much higher risk for respiratory problems, and in some cases are twice as likely as their peers to develop asthma, according to a city Health Department survey released yesterday.

Uriah Pissalidis, 16, a drummer from Baldwin, has played a modest concert for family with other members of his fledgling rock band.

When first responders and police without training in autism encounter someone with the neurological disorder, the call could end in tragedy, a six-member panel of autism experts and advocates said Tuesday.

Autism imposes devastating financial as well as emotional penalties on parents of children afflicted with the disorder, and Long Island schools need to provide more help, according to family advocates who held a Mineola news conference Wednesday.