Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado and Assembly Member Jake Blumencranz joined Locust Valley district officials at its civic engagement summit to celebrate the school’s civic engagement program. The event, which took place on Friday, March 28, highlighted five experiences in the Civics and Constitutional Initiative.
“Having informed citizens who take the responsibility to understand the truth and understand facts is a necessity when it comes to the sustainability of democracy,” Delgado said. “It hinges on an informed citizen.”
“History is something that brings us all together,” said Lauren Themis, the Locust Valley Board of Education president.
Officials also celebrated a $20,000 state-funded grant that funded civic engagement projects in the current school year, secured by Blumencranz. He said he worked with the school district to design the program’s expansion.
“They really utilized that money to help students, not only in their schools but all over the county,” Blumencranz said. Officials from neighboring school districts, like Oyster Bay-East Norwich and Cold Spring Harbor, attended the summit to discuss the programming.
Delgado said the state aims to expand opportunities for students to engage with service-oriented and civic-minded curricula.
“When I see an example like this that is really remarkable, the breadth of the effort and the endeavor, it’s an opportunity to highlight the work being done in this community and to think about the ways it could be scaled up,” he said.
The district highlighted five programs throughout the kindergarten through 12th-grade curriculum, including its partnership with Operation Democracy, an organization that aims to educate students about “war, peace, patriotism and the true cost of freedom,” according to its website. The district collaborates with the Locust-Valley-based organization in its Flags for Freedom program, in which veterans fold American flags for graduating high school students.
The district also organizes a high school veterans’ lunch, a high school student civic summit, a district-wide weeklong curriculum about Normandy, and an annual student trip to Normandy to commemorate D-Day’s anniversary. The district said it is developing dual-enrollment programs for students to earn college credit in its civic education programming.
Blumencranz, who joined students and educators on last year’s trip, said it was “a powerful reminder that the freedoms we enjoy today come at a cost and must be upheld by all of us.”
He addressed the student leaders in the audience:
“You are our next generation of leaders, and your voices matter to all of us. I encourage you to ask questions,” the assemblyman said.
The school district said its curriculum aims to preserve history and teach students critical thinking skills they can implement throughout life.
“We are all here, free, because folks before us sacrificed an awful lot to make sure,” Delgado said.
“Freedom is not free,” Delgado said. “It comes with an immense cost.”
