"These are the times we will always remember . . . "

Meadow Pond Elementary Celebrates 50 Years!

Meadow Pond Elementary School celebrated 50 years to the day on Monday, December 4, 2017. Festivities included Meadow Pond trivia games, special guests, cupcakes for all, and a big birthday gift from the students to the school.

“Meadow Pond Elementary School first welcomed students on December 4, 1967,” said Principal Carolann Castellano at the all-school birthday assembly. “Today, fifty years later, we are celebrating the students, families, staff and community members who were part of Meadow Pond over the years.”

The celebration took place in Meadow Pond Elementary School’s gymnasium, festive with blue balloons and streamers, and students wearing  blue, green, red, yellow, and orange school shirts and commemorative bandanas.

Student Ambassadors welcomed the special guests seated in the center of the gym including Lewisboro Town Historian Maureen Koehl, Lewisboro Town Supervisor Peter Parsons, Superintendent of Schools Andrew Selesnick, and over thirty former Meadow Pond teachers and staff.

The school mascot, Max the Moose, took center stage with Mr. Parsons to issue a town proclamation to the school. Mr. Parsons referenced the huge snowstorm that happened soon after Meadow Pond Elementary School opened, in the winter of 1968, when drifts reached up to the new roof.

“You should ask for a snow day to celebrate this occasion,” Parsons said to cheering students.

The gymnasium filled with new emotions and energy when Priscilla Luckow, kindergarten assistant teacher and key member of the Meadow Pond Birthday Celebration Committee, and Assistant Principal Dawn Pomeroy, the Committee Chair, showed the celebratory slide show. The photos ranged from the early 1900s—the one-room schoolhouse in Vista which preceeded Meadow Pond—through the 1990’s and beyond—the arrival of some of the school’s current teachers and campus additions of a gymnasium, greenhouse, music room, and garden.

Children gleefully guessed the names of their teachers from photos taken “way back when.” Adults felt like it was yesterday.

“Walking into Meadow Pond was a such a glorious blast from the past!” said Nancy Cogswell, former secretary at Meadow Pond and current Guidance Secretary at John Jay Middle School. “It was wonderful to reminisce with retired principals Jack Boyle and Sal Sclafani, and the others I once worked with. Meadow Pond was a wonderful place to work and will always be in my heart!”  

Before students were dismissed for cupcakes in their classrooms, Mrs. Pomeroy revealed the all-school birthday gift to Meadow Pond. In April 2018, students will make a mosaic for the front hall in collaboration with Artist-in-Residence Cynthia Fisher.