HONORING ROBERT (CHICO) FRANKEL - WED., JUNE 3RD

     Robert (Chico) Frankel, colleague, friend, and respected member of the Brentwood family died this year on April 6th. Memorialized the very next day, there were those who would have participated but were unable to attend due to reasons of distance, illness, or family.
     The Retirees of Brentwood Schools responding has arranged with the Brentwood Public Library, to have an open sharing of Mr. Frankel’s final Interview (part of the History Project) which took place on May 29, 2007.
     As a member of ROBS Chico talks about his early years as well as his recollections and impressions of life and work in Brentwood. His spoken word and moving image will remain forever an entertaining, inspiring and inspirational legacy of loving service.
Join us:
Wednesday June 3rd, from 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm on the lower level of the Brentwood Public Library.
     There we’ll celebrate Chico’s life and memory just as we honor all those others lost to us in recent years and who we believe have given so generously of their lives and commitment to the children of Brentwood.

TRIP TO AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

     Dot Zuckerman is planning another one of her wonderful trips on January 27, 2010. It is a 22 day trip to Australia and New Zealand that will cost $6,424 per person including round-trip air transportation.
     You can view the travel brochure here to see the details and itinerary.
     For more information, and to book your trip, please contact Dot at:
Email: dotzee@optonline.net

Annual June Awards Luncheon - June 22

Theater Party - August 27

Ellis Island & Museum of Jewish Heritaage - Sept. 14

The Green-Wood Cemetery & Brooklyn History - Oct. 7

     Florence attended first grade in 1918. Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States. She remembered that two mile walk to school every day. She’d remained friends with her first grade teacher until her teacher’s death in 1993 at 90 plus years of age. Born and then growing up in Brockport, NY, she attended a ‘Normal School’.
     When it came time to go out on her own, salaries even then were known to be better on Long Island. That’s where she headed. Once here she paid an agency fee to a Bay Shore employment firm to obtain her job. It was in the depths of the Great Depression when, though lonesome and far from home, she began teaching in Brentwood on Valentines Day, her twenty first birthday, February 14, 1933, during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Brentwood had only one four room school house.

Brentwood 4 Room School House
     She and another female teacher paid the President of the Board of Education ten dollars a week for room and board to live with his family. She got $1,400 a year for her services and no raise for the next 3 years. It was in 1936, that Florence received a 50 dollar annual raise.
     She remembers using ‘Dick and Jane’ readers in her first year. She was there when math teacher Ronald Genise, pioneered Brentwood’s use of those renowned colored wooden rods called Quizenaire– educational manipulatives for teaching children addition and subtraction. There was as yet, no cafeteria. She remembers having to eat her lunch at a table in the hallway. Though she left teaching for a few years to raise children, upon her return she earned five dollars a day as a Substitute Teacher – this was even before teachers participated in Social Security. That didn’t happen in Brentwood until 1957, the year Ross High School opened. Her retirement from the classroom happened in 1968. By that time her income had grown to over ten thousand dollars per year.