Lillian Carillo announced her intention to leave the Elmont Board of Education where she has served for the past four and a half years. She will be moving out of the district to Merrick. Her resignation will take effect at the end of the month.

The move will mark the end of her time in Elmont, which spans 52 years. She was elected to the Elmont Board of Education in June, 1998 and appointed as an Elmont representative to the Sewanhaka board in July. She served on the Sewanhaka Board of Education for three years. She is a past president of PTA organizations in both the Dutch Broadway School and Elmont Memorial High School and a lifetime member of the New York State PTA.

Her seat on the board is not up until another year and a half. However, she is surrendering her seat, which will remain open until the May 2003 election.

For the lifelong Elmont resident, leaving the district she has gone to school in and served in is a traumatic experience, she said. "I've lived in Elmont all my life, but my job is done here."

Although Carillo was disheartened when, last year, she was not appointed to the Sewanhaka Central High School Board of Education, she is proud of her service. "When I was there, I feel like I've done a lot, but sometimes you just get to the point where you can't do any more so you have to do what you have to do," she said.

At the time she came on the board, the Elmont School District was struggling with the problem of overcrowding in the schools. A plan to purchase the Alva T. Stanforth Junior High School was eventually squashed. Instead, the public passed a crucial bond referendum in 1999 that gave the school district the funds to build additions to all of the schools and solve the problem of overcrowding. Carillo served on the board during that critical moment in the district's history.

As part of the high school board, however, the board was not able to find a solution to the abandoned Alva T. Stanforth Junior High School, which she called the albatross of Elmont.

Her departure marks the end of an era in Elmont, but Carillo leaves with fond memories of the community she grew up in. "I love Elmont. I have no bad memories. I would say there was a start [of bad memories] so maybe it was time for me to move on," she said.