02/01/2026
🔴A Polished Spin Newsletter from Amityville School District — And the Truth it Omitted.
Residents recently received The Tide, the Amityville School District’s quarterly newsletter. While visually polished, several notable omissions and claims warrant closer examination.
🔎Most striking is what the newsletter does not include. There is no discussion of academic performance, student achievement, or measurable instructional improvement. This absence has become a consistent pattern over Superintendent Talbert’s three-year tenure.
Where many districts use these communications to highlight academic progress or instructional gains, The Tide instead relies heavily on large graphics and generalities. For a district facing well-documented academic challenges, the lack of substantive academic reporting is difficult to ignore.
➡Several highlighted items in particular deserve further scrutiny....................
👔New Central Administrative Hires: A Change — But Not for the Reasons Implied
The newsletter promotes the hiring of a new Director of Human Resources and Director of Curriculum, both formerly from high-achieving districts. On its face, this is a positive development and a step in the right direction.
However, it is important for residents to understand why these hires are occurring now.
➡️These appointments are NOT the result of a sudden shift in leadership philosophy or initiative by the superintendent. Rather, they are the direct outcome of NEW oversight, accountability, and transparency measures that did NOT previously exist.
✍️Former Trustee Wendy Canestro’s final action before leaving the Board of Education was a comprehensive rewrite of the district’s administrative hiring policy. This policy was enacted specifically to prevent Talbert's manipulative, long-standing practices in which inexperienced candidates for high level administrative positions were brought forward at the last possible moment for board approval.
The revised policy established clear guardrails, required documentation, community involvement, and restored the Board of Education’s proper oversight role in senior-level appointments.
‼In short, these hires were made possible because the process changed NOT because the leadership did.‼
👉🏻The distinction matters.👈🏻.............................
⚠The Wellness Committee: An Important Body — When It Actually Exists
The newsletter also highlights the district’s Wellness Committee. In functioning districts, this committee plays a meaningful role: it meets regularly, reviews evidence-based practices, and helps ensure policies support students’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
In Amityville, however, the portrayal of this committee bears little resemblance to reality.
🚫At a public Board of Education meeting, Trustee Leon confirmed that the Wellness Committee has NOT MET AT ALL THIS SCHOOL YEAR. He should know since he sits on this committee.
➡️Last year, when it did convene, alongside a BOCES expert, the committee made clear, evidence-based recommendations, including that recess should NOT be used as punishment and that food should NOT be used as a classroom reward.
These recommendations were straightforward and aligned with best practices.
🚫THEY WERE NEVER IMPLEMENTED.
🛑Instead, Superintendent Talbert revised the district's Code of Conduct to explicitly INCLUDE RECESS AS A DISCIPLNARY CONSEQUENCE, even for the district’s youngest learners in pre-kindergarten.
🚩When the revised Code of Conduct was presented for adoption, Trustee Messmann, IMMEDIATELY raised concerns that it directly CONTRADICTED the Wellness Committee’s recommendations.
Those concerns were dismissed.
➡Superintendent Talbert insisted on retaining recess as punishment, and Board President Johnson, along with Trustees Seehof, Kretz, and Nehring, VOTED DOWN every proposed amendment - rejecting not only their own Wellness Committee’s guidance, but also recommendations from BOCES experts and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
⚖️Notably, legislation is currently pending in New York State with both an Assembly bill and a Senate companion that would require elementary schools to provide daily recess and PROHIBIT its use as a disciplinary measure.
🚩Against that backdrop, promoting a non-functioning Wellness Committee in a district newsletter is, at best, misleading........................
📱CELL PHONE POLICY: THE HEADLINE DOESN’T MATCH THE RECORD
The Tide newsletter frames the district’s cell phone policy as a success, but the reality reflects another leadership failure.
🚫Under NYS law, districts were required to have compliant policies in effect on the first day of school - a mandate Superintendent Talbert FAILED to meet. The delayed rollout has also resulted in inconsistent enforcement, with students openly reporting workarounds such as placing calculators or inactive phones in pouches while keeping functioning devices with them.
While many districts continue to face challenges with this new law, promoting this policy as a success in Amityville misrepresents both the timeline and the results.............................
👉SMOKE, MIRRORS, AND A QUIET COUP PLANNED?
The Tide newsletter is a manufactured narrative that masks Superintendent Talbert’s mounting failures and bears no resemblance to the reality in Amityville’s schools.
🚨With no superintendent search announced nearly a year after her contract was not renewed, residents are left to ask whether the current board majority - Johnson, Kretz, Seehof, and Nehring - is attempting a quiet coup to REVERSE that decision and retain a superintendent whose record in Amityville increasingly mirrors her documented FAILURES in Wyandanch.
👉🏻Will these four trustees have the audacity to screw the students, taxpayers and staff by extending Talbert’s contract⁉ This is history repeating itself. Wyandanch didn’t want her and Amityville doesn’t either. Will the board majority defy the community sentiment?
