Wantagh mourns former middle school principal

The Wantagh School District is mourning the loss of its former middle school principal, Dr. Jeannette Stern, who died on Oct. 5 after a battle with cancer. She was 67.

Stern worked in the district for 40 years and was a Spanish and social studies teacher, president of the teachers’ union and Social Studies Department chairwoman before becoming principal of the middle school in 2001. She retired in 2010.

“Jeannette’s impact on Wantagh during her 40-year tenure truly cannot be measured,” said Superintendent Maureen Goldberg, who was a principal in Wantagh at the same time as Stern. “She was the consummate educator, leader and valued friend to all.”

Goldberg spoke about her former colleague at the Oct. 8 Board of Education meeting, which included a moment of silence.

Wantagh United Teachers President Tom Vereline, a middle school teacher, said once you got used to Stern’s oversized personality, you came to learn that she had a big heart. “She loved her staff,” he said. “She loved her students, she loved her colleagues, she loved being an educator and she loved Wantagh.”

During her nine-year tenure as principal, Stern served as president of the New York State Middle School Association. She would often return from conferences boasting about the prominent middle school educators she had met.

Middle school education was her passion, Goldberg said. When the junior high school became a middle school in the late 1980s, Stern was a key figure in helping shape and create programs, such as the multi-grade advisory, which continues on today.

Goldberg said that Stern was the epitome of a hands-on principal, usually the first to arrive and the last to leave each day, and was delighted to solve problems, big and small.

There used to be a single flagpole for the middle school-high school complex and, even before she was principal, Stern fought to get the middle school its own. Vereline recalled that when the old Sunrise Park Elementary School was demolished, she requested its flagpole. Finding out that removing and relocating it would be expensive, the district bought a new flagpole for the middle school, which was dedicated to Stern upon her retirement. “If Jeannette wanted something done, it got done,” he said.