NY School Changes Name From Hemp To Obama
(Governor David A. Patterson Visits Alma Mater Hempstead High School)
NEW YORK (AP) — It was only a matter of time. A New York school has been renamed in honor of President-elect Barack Obama.
The former Ludlum Elementary School, in Long Island’s Hempstead Union Free School District, was renamed at a school board meeting Thursday - effective immediately.
School officials say most of the 440 students there are black or Hispanic, and Obama’s victory is a source of great pride.
The Hempstead Union Free School District Students, Staff and Community Residents Congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the 44th President of the United States of America
Charles Renfroe, President, JoAnn Simmons, Vice-President, Trustees: Gladys Rivera, Sharleen Reshard, Betty Cross, Dr. Joseph A. Laria, Interim Superintendent of Schools
Meanwhile, in [other] unimportant Hemp(Obama)stead School news:
Hempstead school board member being called a fugitive
BY KARLA SCHUSTER - (Hartford Courant)
A Hempstead school board member, evidently depressed over his impending arrest, skipped out on an appointment to surrender yesterday and was still missing last night as the board called for his resignation.
“Now he’s a fugitive in my book,” Nassau Assistant District Attorney Cliff Brock said of board member Terry Grant, 49, a dentist with two children. “He needs to come in and face the music.”
Grant, owner of Gentle Dental on Main Street in Hempstead, had agreed to turn himself in at 8 a.m. yesterday in Mineola on two counts of falsifying business records for filing $1,500 worth of bogus insurance claims for dental work in 2003.
But Grant, who exchanged several frantic phone calls with his attorney on Wednesday, never showed up.
As of 10 last night, Grant had not contacted his attorney, Harry Kutner of Mineola, or prosecutors, authorities said.
His dental practice was shuttered, and his silver Porsche, bearing the license plate “Dr. T DMD,” sat in the driveway at his home yesterday afternoon as investigators searched there, where they found little to indicate Grant’s whereabouts.
Investigators also looked for Grant at his ex-wife’s home in Freeport, and the cemetery where his mother is buried, prosecutors said.
“The longer it goes on, you’ve got to be worried,” Kutner said last night, describing Grant as “being in a fragile emotional state” when they spoke on Wednesday.
“He was sobbing,” Kutner said. “He’s adamant he did all the work for which he was paid and was beside himself about losing his career, embarrassing his children. This is someone who was elected to the school board because of his integrity.”
Only last week, Grant and other members attended training on fiscal responsibility in Rochester, sponsored by the New York State School Boards Association.
If convicted, Grant faces up to 4 years in prison, removal from the school board and very likely losing his dental license. In 2000, Grant was fined $3,000 for filing false insurance claims by the Education Department, which licenses dentists.
Elected to the school board last year, Grant was previously the school district’s dentist. The charges against him involve his private practice.
Nonetheless, prosecutors and the state comptroller’s office consider his case part of a larger investigation they have been conducting of the district for more than a year.
“When you get into these sorts of investigations, things happen you don’t expect, but are a symptom of a larger mindset,” said state Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi at a Mineola news conference yesterday. “It is a remarkable mess.”
Grant is the second board member charged with a felony in nine months, and the third person charged in the investigation of the district. The first board member, Thomas Parsley Jr., was convicted of grand larceny and removed from the board in July.
The taint of Grant’s case alone is enough to warrant his resignation, even though he is legally permitted to serve unless convicted, said board President Ralph Schneider.
” … the district and the community would probably be best served,” Schneider said, “if he stepped down.”
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