Two weeks ago, several members of the board of education and I attended the annual conference of the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA) in upstate New York. This meeting of thousands of school board members and superintendents from around the state is one of several opportunities that school officials have each year to enhance their school districts by learning from one another.

As a school district that has implemented a number of innovative programs and whose students enjoy outstanding academic success, it is incumbent upon us to share our positive experiences with educators in other parts of New York and throughout the United States. There are many educational journals and newsletters through which educational ideas are shared, and Roslyn administrators and faculty read them and contribute to them, but there is no substitute for face-to-face seminars and workshops where a program can be explained at length and explored fully through interactive participation.

Fortunately, many other schools around the nation feel the same way and we are able to learn a great deal from them, as well. While Roslyn certainly has no monopoly of good ideas, the response we have received at a number of conference presentations in the last few years clearly indicates that other schools are eager to learn about ideas that we have successfully brought to fruition.

Looking back over the last three years, Roslyn has been exceptionally active as a conference presenter. Twice in 1996, we gave presentations about our successful 1994 bond referendum campaign at a joint NYSSBA/New York State School Public Relations Association seminar and to a meeting of the New Jersey School Administrators Association. Early in 1997, I expanded on this topic at another NYSSBA workshop to encompass issues of facilities project management and communication. This topic was also the focus of a meeting of the Long Island School Public Relations Association to which I was invited as a speaker. At the NYSSBA convention in the fall of 1997, we spoke about our school-business partnership program.

Members of our board of education have also been active in making presentations for NYSSBA. At the 1996 annual convention, Ms. Schissel and Ms. Seigel spoke about our comprehensive sex education program. At the convention just past Ms. Seigel presented again, this time on the subject of tolerance and the district's recently established Human Sexuality Awareness Committee. Our sex education and condom availability programs were also the subject of a presentation at the annual conference of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) in 1997.

In the 1998-99 school year, Roslyn staff members were invited to speak at all three of the largest national education conferences: the National School Boards Association (NSBA), the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). The Roslyn school community should consider this a measure of the esteem with which our schools are held around the nation, as these organizations choose only a few dozen topics for presentation from among the hundreds they receive each year.

Topics covered at these presentations were the Community Service program at Roslyn High School, multiculturalism and diversity, and the Gold Card program, which had received the NSBA's Magna Award in the spring of 1998. In the coming year, I will return along with Roslyn administrators to make presentations at both the AASA and ASCD Conferences.

There isn't sufficient space here to detail the extraordinary level of participation by members of the Roslyn faculty as presenters and panelists at numerous state, regional and national conferences covering every subject area, from English, foreign language, math, social studies and the sciences to special education and technology. I am exceedingly proud of the degree to which our staff dedicates itself not only to the success of the children of our community, but to the advancement of the educational profession as a whole.

By learning from the best of other schools, and by setting examples for others through the best that Roslyn has to offer, we help students achieve success here in Roslyn and throughout the nation.