A home-grown PTA leader

East Meadow native Shannon Necci said she loves being a mom and being involved with her children, so it was no surprise when, in 2015, she joined the McVey Elementary School Parent Teacher Association, where she is now a co-president. Her oldest daughter, Olivia, now 11, was starting kindergarten at the time.

While serving as the McVey PTA co-president alongside Karen Baker, Necci is also the second vice president of the Woodland Middle School PTA, which Olivia now attends. Her younger daughter, Natalie, 10, is a McVey fifth-grader.

Necci, 37, became the McVey PTA recording secretary in 2015, and moved up to corresponding secretary, vice president and president from there. “I never really thought about the PTA, but I always wanted to be married and have kids and be home with my kids,” she said. “When I joined, everyone was so nice and so welcoming, and it was just like the perfect fit.”

Jill Mallilo, who had encouraged Necci to join the PTA, said her friend is the best “worker bee” around, adding, “She’s a great asset to the PTA at McVey.”

Necci grew up in East Meadow, and graduated from W.T. Clarke High School in 2002. She earned a degree in business management from Monmouth University in New Jersey in 2006, and a master’s in business education from Hofstra University in 2007.

“I loved my business classes in high school,” she said. “I loved that they could be different and fun.”

After graduation, she taught business education in grades seven through 12 at H. Frank Carey High School in Franklin Square and Elmont Memorial Junior-Senior High School in Elmont until becoming pregnant with Olivia in 2010.

“I really wanted to be home,” Necci said. “I was that mom who went to the mommy-and-me classes and had the playdates.”

Since 2017, she has been a Woodland Middle School cafeteria monitor, a part-time job that she took so she could be close to home, which she said she loves. “I’m very happy with what I do now,” she said. “I get to wake up with my kids in the morning, I get to take them to school every day, and I pick them up and take them to their activities.”

She also said that working at Woodland and being involved in the Woodland PTA allows her to help the school in different ways. “I’m able to help on a different level,” she said. “I see things at the school and hear what the teachers or staff or students need.”

One of Necci’s favorite PTA events is the gingerbread night, for which McVey students can come to school at night in their pajamas and decorate a gingerbread man around Christmas. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the event is now done during school.

Baker described Necci as dependable. “She’s around as much as she can be,” Baker said. “She’s always willing to lend a hand and make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible.

Necci met her husband, Benjamin, 41, also an East Meadow native, in 2006 through her brother, Kyle Roberts, because the two were friends. The Neccis married in 2009. Benjamin is a Village of Valley Stream santitation worker, and the couple have a landscaping business, BNL Landscape and Design.

“I never thought about leaving East Meadow,” Shannon said. “Our lives are here and our kids are here,” she said, adding, “No one is more East Meadow than us.”

She has coached intramural softball for the East Meadow Baseball Softball Association for three years with Benjamin, who also coaches in the travel softball league, which he has done for five years. And the couple are on the EMBSA board. If that weren’t enough, Shannon is coaching volleyball for the St. Raphael’s Catholic Youth Organization.

“We do so much, and it’s not like we drop our kids off,” Shannon said. “We are so involved, and I don’t even know how we do it all.”