________ Franklin square/elmont _______
HERALD Vol. 27 No. 18
New school district budget
Student art at public library
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MAY 1 - 7, 2025
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Voices of Elmont celebrates choir’s first year in song By RENEE DeloRENZo rdelorenzo@liherald.com
Courtesy Tyrone Johnson
The children of Voices of Elmont celebrated their first anniversary, showing that every voice matters.
Voices of Elmont, a community-based youth choir spearheaded by Elmont Bus Attendant Aisha Stevenson, celebrated its one-year anniversary on April 19 at Averill Park in Franklin Square. Stevenson, the choir’s founder, has been leading her students in song aboard what she calls the “party bus” since 2018. She sparked the rising youth movement last spring, growing membership from nine kids to over 50 in the past year. As a bus attendant, Stevenson said she interacts with kids in the Elmont school district almost daily. She began directing students to sing songs on their way to and from school shortly after she began working for the school’s contracted transportation company, We Transport, Inc. While she only has the kids under her supervision for a short, 15-minute bus ride to and from the school buildings, she said she uses the time to make it as lively and ConTinuEd on pagE 8
Legacies: Building a future by remembering the past By RENEE DeloRENZo rdelorenzo@liherald.com
The Franklin Square Historical Society hosted its 44th Annual Dinner at the Plattdeutsche Park Restaurant on April 24, and honored Assemblyman Ed Ra with its Citizen of the Year Award. More than 130 guests celebrated the accomplishments of the historical society as restaurant staff served them pastas, steak and chicken. Paul van Wie, 68, the village historian and a lifelong Franklin Square resident, said the historical society was founded in 1975, alongside the Ben
Franklin Bicentennial Committee, in anticipation of the Unites States’ 200th birthday. Van Wie, an 18-year-old history buff at the time, joined the new committee. Its main task, he recalled, was gathering artifacts and photos of historical significance to Franklin Square. Residents whose families had lived in the town for generations donated many of the museum’s items. The next task, van Wie said, was raising money for a museum building. The historical society began fundraising in 1980, and, in 1993, launched a campaign to construct the building on Naple Avenue.
Work began in 2005, and the Franklin Square Historical Museum was finally finished in 2019. It opened to the public in late 2022. Today, van Wie said, the historical society possesses thousands of artifacts and over 2,800 historical photographs. According to Julie Soffientini, a member of the organization’s board of trustees, the docents at the museum are all volunteers—many of them retired teachers from the school district. They work hard, Soffientini said, to create an immersive experience for residents and students to explore the village’s rich history.
Soffientini, 76, started volunteering with the historical society in 2021, but has been a member since its inception. As the school district’s for mer superintendent of curriculum and instruction, she began mapping out a curriculum for students who would attend the museum before its opening. “I don’t think they appreci-
ate how important the community of Franklin Square was in the history of Nassau County, or in the history of New York,” Soffientini said of the students. “They’re unaware of what it was like for the generations of their parents and grandparents.” Much of the students’ expeConTinuEd on pagE 7