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PEEKSKILL, N.Y. - The Peekskill City School District bid a fond farewell to several longtime employees Tuesday night.
Peekskill Middle School teachers Sue Mahoney, Sue Buchanan and John Cooley; Peekskill High School teacher's aide Margaret Conklin and teacher Matilda Zeoli; as well as district secretaries Judy Secord, Diane Eckert and Elaine Mule, will all be retiring at the end of the current school year.
Supervisor of Special Education Alice MacLennan was also honored and will be retiring from the district.
Conklin worked with special-education students in the life skills program. Secord is retiring from the high school after 10 years in the district.
Zeoli, a Peekskill High School graduate, is retiring after 37 years in the district as a special-education teacher.
Buchanan taught special education at the high school after 22 years of teaching in the elementary schools.
Mule, a Peekskill native, has been in the district for 27 years: nine at Hillcrest, one in the middle school, 10 in special education, five in human resources and two with the LEAP program. Eckert, a Peekskill High School graduate, has been with the district almost 30 years.
Cooley has been a science teacher at the middle school for 34 years and led the school's environmental program for many years. Mahoney is a family and consumer science (home and careers) teacher, and was also involved in the middle school environmental club.
Each employee selected a book to be donated to their school library by the PTO in their honor. The choices of each retiree are:
Marageret Conklin: "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks
Judy Secord: "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell
Matilda Zeoli: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey
Sue Buchanan: "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson
Elaine Mule: "Payback" by James Heneghan
John Cooley: "American Grown" by Michelle Obama
Sue Mahoney: "The Betty Crocker Cookbook"
Diane Eckert: "Middle School: Get Me out Of Here!" by James Patterson
Alice MacLennan: "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein.
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