Just to put into perspective how long Dr. Carpentier has been working in the Mineola School District, consider that he has been an educator in Mineola for as long as man has been able to land on the moon.

Dr. Carpentier started his Mineola tenure as a sixth grade teacher at the Jackson Avenue School in 1969, the same year high school assistant principal Mike Terc, who will also be leaving the Mineola district, began at then Mineola Junior High School.

Since the year that saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon and the Miracle Mets pull off an amazing upset in the 1969 World Series, Dr. Carpentier has worked in various schools in the district. He stayed in the Jackson Ave. until 1982, then the middle school as the sixth grade teacher at Mineola Middle School.

For the past 16 years, he has been the principal at Meadow Drive School. Recently, though, Dr. Carpentier has submitted his resignation to the board of education. He feels it is time to take the next step in his career and hopes to be teaching full-time at Molloy College, where he has been teaching for the past two and a half years. However, his resignation doesn't take effect until the end of the calendar year so Dr. Carpentier will remain the principal of the Meadow Drive School until the end of December.

"I'm leaving one part of my profession and entering another," he said.

Dr. Carpentier said it's going to be sad to be leaving a district that he has worked in for over three decades. "Mineola is really my second home. I've known thousands of people not even counting the students I've come across," he said.

An educator knows he has been at a school a long time when he was around when he remembers some of the students' parents when they were students in the school. That has certainly been the case for Dr. Carpentier. However, he is looking forward to the next stage of his career.

Although he will be teaching in college, it was elementary education that originally attracted him to the profession. At the time, there weren't many openings for secondary education teachers. However, Dr. Carpentier had 10 offers for elementary education teaching positions before he even graduated.

Although Dr. Carpentier is certified in secondary education as well as elementary, he went the route of elementary and hasn't looked back. He's seen education change over the years. With the advent of technology, there is more information available to students now than ever before. Luckily, there have been discoveries in education concerning learning disabilities so students can get the help they need instead of being labeled as lazy or stupid. "Learning disabilities weren't even a classification when I started teaching," Dr. Carpentier recalled. "When children come to us now, we have a lot more knowledge of how they learn and a lot more ways to remediate them."

Although there have been many changes in education over the past 32 years, what Dr. Carpentier will miss most about his job is something that hasn't changed - the camaraderie of all of the different aspects of the school community such as parents, teachers and students coming together for the benefit of learning. "What has made me a better educator is the interaction with the children all those years," he said. "Meadow Drive is a small school with only about 300 children so I know all of them. That's something I've been able to bring to Molloy - the daily conversations I've had with children and some of the things they say, especially at this level, are so adorable."

While educating elementary school-aged children may be seen as a difficult challenge, it was the proper choice for Dr. Carpentier. "I never one day in all the years said that I didn't want to go into work," he said. "Every day has been wonderful and this is a wonderful district."

But Dr. Carpentier feels he has met all of the challenges he wanted to meet and while teaching at Molloy, realized he missed being in the classroom teaching. '"I have been in this position for 16 years and I had forgotten what a joy I got out of teaching," he said.

Dr. Carpentier's departure marks yet another change in the personnel of the district. He joins superintendent of schools Dr. Harry Jaroslaw, Mineola High School Principal Jay Lewis, assistant principal Mike Terc, longtime coach and physical education teacher Bob Young and district director of health, physical education and athletics as educators with significant positions in the district to recently resign from the schools.

But, Dr. Carpentier is glad he spent so many years in the Mineola School District, which he calls the best-kept secret on Long Island. "This is a wonderful place. The warmth of the district is apparent. That is what attracted me to this district and that is what kept me at this district," he said.