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With outstretched arms and hands linked, scores of elementary students in Sea Cliff formed a human chain yesterday that reached a block and a half long.
It was a symbolic gesture linking the Sea Cliff elementary school, which is about to undergo a major restoration, to a vacant Catholic school. The latter building will house the students in the fall until renovations of their 100-year-old school are complete.
"It's an ending here and a beginning there," said parent Robin Dunn, who pushed her nearly 1-year-old son in a stroller alongside dozens of students standing outside the school. She has three other children in the district.
There were endings aplenty yesterday, as hundreds of thousands of students across Long Island cleaned out desks and rehearsed for graduations. Adding to the usual pressures of closing activities are the effects of enrollment growth, which are requiring many districts to reassign youngsters to unfamiliar buildings.
Today marks the official end of school, and teachers yesterday used their imaginations to keep restless youngsters occupied with beach days, carnivals and picnics. For some, there was also the chance to squeeze in one last lesson.
At Malverne's Davison Avenue School, instructor Emily Schreiber, who has won widespread recognition for her academic creativity, asked her second-graders to trace pictures...