Editorial: No More ‘Pink Slime’ in the Great Neck Public Schools!

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Editorial: No More ‘Pink Slime’ in the Great Neck Public Schools!

Friday, 06 April 2012 00:00

With a gracious nod to the Great Neck Record, Great Neck Public Schools Superintendent Tom Dolan announced that the school district no longer serves government issued, free USDA chopped beef containing “pink slime.” The latest flap over the beef filler, which reportedly contained a substance to help prevent e-coli, was reported at length in the March 22 issue of all Anton Newspapers. The Great Neck School District had been serving this free, reportedly safe beef, but immediately stopped serving it after reading the featured article in the Record.

At the March 26 board of education meeting, Dr. Dolan announced that, after reading the article in the Record, neither he nor anyone in the school district involved with food, felt “comfortable” with the “pink slime” additive. And so, they decided to “decline the offer” from the USDA, and have already found another source where they are now purchasing chopped beef, minus the “pink slime.”

Dr. Dolan also said that the school district is seeking a source that might need their leftover meat and would accept it, even knowing about the additive. And he added that when Great Neck told the USDA that they could no longer accept the beef, they also suggested that the government find a needy group or organization that would accept this donation. Dr. Dolan did point out that they felt the meat was “unsavory, but not unsafe.”

As for this beef served in the past. Dr. Dolan assured that there have been no problems in the district resulting from those meals. And he made note of the fact that very little beef is served and very few beef meals are purchased by students. He said that only about 120 hamburgers are purchased each day, out of 4,000 meals served.

“This was just a preventative measure on our part,” Dr. Dolan said. “It was just the ‘yuck’ factor!”

Dr. Dolan was most appreciative that the Record article brought this issue to his attention. He was more than pleased to then be able to use this information to correct the situation.

We are very proud that our newspaper (and our entire newspaper chain) brought such up-to-the-minute, valuable information to our community. And we are so proud that our school district, once again, did the right thing for our children.

Working together is wonderful!

-Wendy Karpel Kreitzman

News

School District Accepts Donations

Friday, 17 May 2013 00:00

Once again the Great Neck School District received a host of gifts and donations. All were recently approved and accepted by the Board of Education at school board public action meetings.

Eight donations were received for the Robotics Club, to help offset some of the many costs associated with running a successful robotics program. Donations were sent from: the Rotary Club of Gold Coast, Cathy Sung, Stephen and Beth Wolf, Joel and Ellen Dressner, Jay and Judi Bosworth, Edith Novick and Dmitriy Tokar, Gary and Bianna Gal, Scott and Barbara Erlich and Jill A. Krieger.

Sports

Therapeutic Skating Program Completed

Friday, 17 May 2013 00:00

The Great Neck Park District, in partnership with the Great Neck Figure Skating Club and the Great Neck School District, started the Therapeutic Skating program in February 2013. This program was extremely beneficial to students with special needs from Great Neck North Middle and High Schools. The skaters met bi-monthly at the Andrew Stergiopoulos Ice Rink through Tuesday, April 23. They ended the season with a skating session as usual and then enthusiastically were awarded their trophies.