Susan Bergtraum
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Resident of East Williston UFSD
Susan Bergtraum has served as a member of the Nassau BOCES Board of Trustees since 2006, holding the positions of President from 2019 until 2024 as well as Vice President and District Clerk.
Bergtraum served as President, Vice President and Area 11 Director (representing Nassau County) of the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA). She chaired NYSSBA’s Policy and Bylaws Committee, the Operations Committee, the Awards Committee and a Task Force on Student Health and Safety.
Ms. Bergtraum is a past President and Vice President of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association (N-SSBA) and currently sits on N-SSBA's Executive, Legislation and Finance Committees.
She was a member of the East Williston Board from 1991 to 2006, serving as its President for the last five (5) years. She is the co-Founder and a Trustee of the East Williston Education Foundation, as well as a Trustee of the Wheatley Scholarship Fund. She sat on the Council for Prejudice Reduction and on an Advisory Board for the Suffolk Center on the Holocaust, Diversity and Human Understanding. She is on the Nassau County Human Rights Commission Advisory Board for its student conference. Ms. Bergtraum has been a guest lecturer at several local colleges, including Adelphi University, C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and Queens College. She is the co-author of the book “Playing it Safe.”
In 2002, Ms. Bergtraum was awarded the Detective Joe Zito Memorial Award from the Council for Prejudice Reduction. In 2011, she received the Nassau BOCES Education Partner Award in recognition of her commitment to public education. Other awards include the Friends of Education Award, the Council of Administrators and Supervisors Award, the N-SSBA's Presidential Award and the Long Island Crisis Center’s Person of the Year 2015 Award.
Ms. Bergtraum completed both her undergraduate and graduate studies at Queens College, earning her Bachelor’s in Education and her Masters in School Psychology. She taught in New York City and Washington, D.C. and worked for Evaluation and Placement, a special education evaluation team in New York City, which was the precursor to the current Committees on Special Education (CSE). She also worked as the Director of Training for “Playing it Safe.”