Deer Park High School juniors Kayla Cruz and Ava Sacarin recently won first place in the Medicine/Health category at the American Chemical Society’s Chemagination Competition, held on March 7 at St. John’s University in Queens. 

The competition challenges high school students to imagine that they are living 25 years in the future and have been invited to write an article for “ChemMatters,” a magazine for high school students that focuses on the role of chemistry in everyday life. For this imagined article, the students must create a breakthrough or innovation in chemistry in one of four categories – Alternative Energy, Environment, Medicine/Health and New Materials – that has improved the quality of people's lives from 2025 to the year 2050, including details on the development of their invention, the science behind it and how it would work in the future. Additionally, students are asked to design a cover for the magazine. Cruz and Sacarin’s project focused on contact lenses designed to detect glucose levels in tears and monitor the health of the wearers.

“These contact lenses would basically be another smart wearable, but to the next level,” Sacarin said. “I participated in Chemagination last year, but we didn’t make it to the final round. This year, I decided to participate again, and we got a little more involved with it and ended up winning first place, which felt really good.”

“Chemagination is a great idea to show the opportunities that science has for teenagers, because this competition was geared towards teenagers,” Cruz said. “Using your imagination, there’s so much in the medical and environmental fields that can be done with science, and I think that really is shown through Chemagination, because you have the motivation of the competition, and you also actually learn a lot through your project.”

“Ava and Kayla’s inspiring love of science and vision for the future were on full display in their very impressive showing,” science teacher Ed Libretto sad. “I have no doubt this is the first of many future accomplishments by these talented students.”

Date Added: 3/24/2025

Guided by music teacher Diana Cotrone, Deer Park’s John Quincy Adams Primary School started a popular after-school Ukulele Club for second graders during this school year, utilizing the ukuleles provided via a TangerKids Grants program. Cotrone’s “Uke Can Do It!” proposal had been chosen in late 2023 to receive the $2,000 grant. Under her direction, the students learned how to take care of the instruments, play them and perform with them. Some even purchased their ukuleles to continue learning the instrument. The Ukulele Club finished the year by creating their own performance video.

“All the students did an amazing job,” Cotrone sad. “I am so proud of all they have accomplished.”

Date Added: 3/24/2025

Deer Park High School’s DECA club brought home five trophies after competing in New York DECA’s 65th annual State Career Conference. The 45 participating DECA members from Deer Park were among nearly 2,500 high school business students from across the state in attendance at the annual contest, held March 5-7 at the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center in Rochester.  

Trophy winners were Lauren Marable, earning first place in Principles of Marketing; Reza Zorakhsh, earning second place in Personal Financial Literacy; Syed Muhammad Hashmi, earning third place in Principles of Finance; Sidra Syed, earning third place in Food Marketing; and Ruby Kappel, earning sixth place in Apparel & Accessories Marketing. These five trophy winners earned the right to move on to compete in DECA’s International Career Development Conference from April 26-29 in Orlando, Florida.

Top 10 test winners were Abigail Cullen (Hotel & Lodging Management), Valerie Ponte (Human Resources Management), Jayna Singh (Quick Serve Restaurant Management) and Madison Griffin (Retail Merchandising); a Top 10 role play winner was Jaidyn Schabe (Personal Financial Literacy).

Seniors Shubat Alam, Gloria Min, Valerie Ponte, Hassan Rehman and Adib Shaikh were inducted into the New York DECA Honor Society; requirements for induction include three or four years of membership in the club, an 85 average in all classes, a 90 average in business classes and participation in at least one state conference.

Also, Deer Park High School’s school store received School-Based Enterprise Gold Level Re-Certification thanks to a proposal written by Gloria Min and Valerie Ponte.

“Congratulations to all of our students on a job well done,” Deer Park DECA adviser Gregory Menig said.

Date Added: 3/21/2025

Robert Frost Middle School’s “We Can Do Both" movement highlights students who embrace both sports and music, showcasing that it’s possible to excel in both. During Music in Our Schools Month in March, these student-athletes proudly shared photos with their sports uniforms and musical instruments, demonstrating their commitment, passion and dedication to both their athletic and musical pursuits. 

“This movement is a celebration of the balance and versatility that comes from being involved in both sports and music,” Robert Frost Chorus Director Grace Donofrio said.

Date Added: 3/21/2025

Hosted by Director of Mathematics and Business Christine Gill and math teacher Lauren Kalinowski, Deer Park’s Robert Frost Middle School held its second annual Pi Day celebration on March 14 in the gymnasium, running through all nine periods of the school day. During each of these hour-long periods, students could choose to participate in one competition and one craft at Pi-themed activity stations. Highlights include a pi reciting contest, cookie measuring, trivia challenge, paper chain construction, song creation, hula hoop and ring tosses, and a messy race to eat whipped cream off small dessert plates.

During the last 10 minutes of each period, the winning student of each contest earned the unique and entertaining right to “pie” a teacher, administrator or Board of Education member in the face with a paper plate full of whipped cream, continuing a tradition that brought lots of laughter, fun and unforgettable memories.  
Several Robert Frost students were able to recite hundreds of digits of pi.

Champions from each period with the total amount of digits recited were: Victor Luna (532),  Abigail Daniel (197), Zoey Eisenoff (159), Rabitah Ferdousy (133), Zara Irfan (112), Sarai Ponce (103), Alyssa Jones (100), Anthony Zakaria (100), Sujin Paudel (80), Kingston Treco (69), Niall Rampershad (66), Hailey Cannet (63), Tasnuva Samia (61), Portia Cangiano (58), Hewlynn Beneesh (57), Sofia Genao (54), Nathaniel Fahl (52) and Hooria Usman (50).