When the annual Awards for Excellence in Education were announced this year recognizing individuals for their outstanding abilities in board service, administration, and teaching, Ulster BOCES found they had received recognition in each of the three categories.
Barbara Santoro, Ulster BOCES Board of Education member; Gary Suraci, principal of the Ulster BOCES Career & Technical Center; and Michael Brown, formerly a social studies teacher at the Center for Alternative Education at Port Ewen, have received Awards for Excellence from the Mid-Hudson School Study Council for their extraordinary efforts to better education.
“If you look at our history, we have done very well with these awards,” Ulster BOCES Board of Education President Donald Greene noted. “We have some exceptionally hardworking people.”
Based at SUNY New Paltz and partnered with the university’s School of Education, the Mid-Hudson School Study Council encompasses the entire Hudson Valley region. Its mission is to improve the education offered in the region’s school districts through the cooperative study of common educational problems, the diffusion of “Best Practice” strategies, and the active participation of all the shareholders of the educational process, from district administrators to the students they serve.
Barbara Santoro has served on the Ulster BOCES Board of Education since 1994. Greene praised her in-depth knowledge of educational issues and her “down to earth” manner.
“Barbara is just a joy to work with,” said Greene. “She’s extremely knowledgeable. You can agree or disagree with her on a given issue and she will still work well with you.”
Len Cane, current member and former president of the Ulster BOCES Board of Education, added, “Above all, it’s Barbara’s concern for good schools and the education of our young people that is most admired.”
Commenting on Gary Suraci’s award, Greene stressed how difficult it is to oversee a school like the Career & Technical Center.
“Students come to the Career & Technical Center for a lot of different reasons,” said Greene. “Some students have a strong desire to specialize in their field of interest at the high school level, some are exceptionally gifted students entering the New Visions program, and some are at-risk students looking to turn their lives around. You have to work a lot harder to handle the whole spectrum.”
Greene added that, in his opinion, it takes a very special individual to provide leadership at a school like the Career & Technical Center, especially to do it as well as Suraci has done.
The Ulster BOCES Career & Technical Center, where Suraci is the principal, was selected as one of eight pilot schools for the national High Schools That Work initiative in New York State. HSTW aims to help schools improve both in academics and career and technical education.
“So impressed have I been by Gary’s work with the HSTW program that I have twice asked him to make presentations on his efforts,” said Margaret Lynch-Brennan, associate and co-state coordinator for the national program.
“I’ve never met anyone who could evaluate teachers as fairly and thoroughly as Gary Suraci, work with them on a daily basis with such good humor, and run a school filled with mercurial adolescents as quietly and decently as he does,” said Taylor Klose, one of the teachers on his staff who had also recommended his nomination.
Michael Brown had been a social studies teacher at the Center for Alternative Education for eight years when he received the Award for Excellence in Teaching. Brown recently accepted a position in a neighboring county’s school district.
“Motivated by an unending desire to expand his professional knowledge, Mike Brown continues to exemplify the position of a lead teacher by striving for excellence in all that he does,” said Martin Ruglis, district superintendent of Ulster BOCES.
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