Bridget Lively, a senior at Island Trees High School, is being lauded as one of the most devoted supporters of public education on Long Island. Lively is among 13 honorees to receive the 2015 Nassau BOCES Education Partner award, bestowed annually on those individuals and organizations whose impact on public education in Nassau County can be measured in tangible ways.
A strategic education partner with school districts since 1967, Nassau BOCES created the awards program to recognize those who share its mission of ensuring a successful, challenging, caring and safe environment that enables students of all ages and abilities to achieve their maximum potential. These outstanding individuals and organizations have made strides to accomplishing key educational goals embraced by Nassau BOCES, such as ensuring student success.
Lively will be honored at the awards gala held in March by the Nassau BOCES Educational Foundation. The foundation is an independent non-profit organization that raises funds for innovative educational programs that fall outside of the agency’s budget.
An active leader in her school and community, Lively is also a prized athlete on the varsity soccer and lacrosse teams and has been named a Scholar Athlete and an All-Conference champ. An accomplished musician, she leads the high school marching band as a drum major and is a first-chair clarinetist in concert band. Lively also serves as president of the
Foreign Language Honor Society, vice president of the National Honor Society, treasurer of the Tri-M Music Honor Society and secretary of Athletes Helping Athletes, a peer counseling group. She is a committed member of Key Club, Spanish Club, Yearbook Club and the Varsity Quizbowl team.
The senior spearheaded the effort to bring the Glamour Girls community outreach program to Island Trees. Now, as co-president, she oversees the group’s monthly visits to nursing homes, where students give manicures, facials and makeovers to participating residents.
Lively has been chosen to participate in important conferences, such as the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Conference. Last spring, she was selected by the League of Women Voters to represent Nassau County at the Students Inside Albany Conference, where she met her local assemblyman, and sat on the assembly and Senate floors.
Even with her extraordinarily involved extracurricular life, Lively is a top academic achiever, ranking fifth in her class. She has held a place on the High Honor Roll her entire high school career and has earned the AP Scholar with Distinction Award while maintaining a full course load of advanced placement classes.
Outside of school, Lively is a clinic leader for the Police Activity League Youth Girls’ Lacrosse Camp and a certified Junior Lacrosse Official. She dutifully serves her church as a Sunday
School teacher, counselor in training for the elementary girls’ group, and as a member of the youth group and student praise team.
She has done remarkable humanitarian work across the country, helping to rebuild in Joplin, MO in the wake of an F5 tornado that destroyed the town and lending a helping hand in
South Dakota, where she helped to bring new homes to the impoverished Pine Ridge Native American Reservation. Closer to home, she worked in the Rockaways to help rebuild following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.
“Bridget Lively is an ambitious, dedicated and vivacious young lady,” wrote her award nominator. “She excels in the classroom and is dedicated to helping her fellow students to fight peer pressure, combat the dangers of destructive decision-making and to make positive choices.”
