Parents Make Massapequa 'Great Again' After Trump Yearbook Snub
MASSAPEQUA, NY — When Massapequa school 2019 yearbooks omitted a page honoring President Donald Trump, several parents complained to the district and one arranged to have stickers made that students could place into yearbooks themselves.
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The complaints also prompted Herrf Jones, the company that printed the news section of the yearbooks, to offer the students one-page inserts showing the commander-in-chief with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“They heard from many parents how dissatisfied they were that there was no picture of the president in there,” District Clerk Anne Marie Bellizzi told Patch on Wednesday. “So they chose to reprint the news events and the schools handed them out to the students.”
Mike Quigley, executive assistant to the principal at Massapequa High School, said the inserts depicted Trump shaking hands with Kim. But a Herff Jones representative who works with the high school said he was unaware of the omission and any response from the company.
Asked whether this was the first such instance of parents complaining about a president being omitted, Bellizzi said it was the first time the issue had been brought the district’s attention.
“We got many complaints from many parents,” she said.
The omission also prompted at least one unhappy parent to print stickers of Trump and give them to students who wanted them. The sticker shows a smiling Trump with the accompanying message, “Making Massapequa Great Again!!!”
Victoria Shestokovich, a student at Massapequa High School, told Patch in an Instagram message their yearbooks were distributed June 7, along with the presidential inserts.
“There was a pile of inserts on the table and whoever wanted it got it,” she wrote.
Shestokovich said she didn’t know whether previous yearbooks had included a page devoted to the sitting president. She said she put one of the stickers in her own yearbook.
A social media post from Twitter user @gmaloneyy showed a banner hung on a fence outside the graduation ceremony showing a photo and caption similar to that on the sticker.
Massapequa HS didn’t include POTUS @realDonaldTrump in their yearbook, which has always had a presidential/section for politics. My friends parents ordered over 400 stickers for the graduating class to put in yearbooks and hung these banners @ grad ceremony #MAGA @DonaldJTrumpJr pic.twitter.com/CTxPVd4qrB
— G (@gmaloneyy) June 25, 2019
Quigley said he didn’t see the banners at the ceremony Monday, which was held at Hofstra University, but that he received multiple texts from those who did. The district did not own or endorse the signs.
“That was a rogue person,” he said.
Patch’s Gus Saltonstall contributed reporting.