Long Island school districts hiring recently retired educators far more since New York suspended waiver
Three Mount Sinai school district administrators and a clerk retired in 2022 — but didn’t leave their jobs.
Their deals enabled them to collect six-figure pensions and severance payouts on top of reduced district salaries, together more than $1.6 million last school year, according to district memos, payroll and state pension records Newsday obtained from Freedom of Information Law requests.
And they’re far from the only retired educators at Long Island schools simultaneously receiving a salary and a pension, a practice commonly referred to as double dipping.
Long Island school districts employed hundreds of retired educators last school year, a Newsday exclusive investigation found, including 46 who grossed more than $200,000 in combined salary and pension payments and seven who eclipsed $400,000.
Districts say they do this because of a shrinking pool of qualified and specialized educators, and they have been aided by no longer needing a waiver to pay a retiree younger than 65 more than $35,000. The state initially lifted the waiver rule for all public employers in April 2020 to encourage retired health care workers to return to work at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and lawmakers continued the exemption only for schools.
Newsday identified at least 51 retired educators on district payrolls who would have required waivers under the previous rules — nearly four times as many waivers for retired educators that the state Education Department typically issued Long Island districts annually before the pandemic. Nearly half grossed more than $200,000 in total, records show.
Skeptics say the districts and retirees, while acting within the law, are misusing the state pension system, thus discouraging districts from developing a succession plan and allowing retirees to enrich themselves with simultaneous pay and pension checks — with the long-term cost falling on taxpayers.
"People have an incentive to sit and do the math and say, I can get a pension and a paycheck at the same time," said Ken Girardin, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative-leaning think tank based in Albany. He said the practice "goes completely against the original intent" of the state pension system.
The current system that allows districts to more freely hire retirees — without having to lobby the state for approval — is set to expire in June, and state and local superintendents and school board associations say they would like state legislators to extend the rules.
The school leaders say hiring challenges for specialized positions such as top administrators and English language learner teachers are significant and adding experienced retirees into the mix benefits students. They also said they prefer to avoid double dipping.
"We’ve heard, ‘They’ve already retired, move over, make room for the next person,’ but sometimes in today’s day and age, there’s a dwindling pool to move on to the next person," said Robert Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association. He cited a shortage of specialized educators such as career and trade teachers and special education teachers across Long Island.
Hiring retirees could hurt districts’ stated intentions to diversify an educator pool that Islandwide is overwhelmingly white, said Dafny Irizarry, president of the Long Island Latino Teachers Association. Minorities represented 57% of Long Island's student body and nearly 10% of educators in the most recent state figures.
"It’s great they still want to serve our children — regardless of their race or ethnicity — but the practice might also be giving school districts an easy way out from the work of recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce and teaching staff that all research shows will benefit all students, white and nonwhite alike," Irizarry said.
Districts need a better solution than relying on retirees, said attorney Steven Cohen, who investigated pension fraud in schools a decade ago at the state Attorney General’s Office and now works in private practice in Manhattan.
"The public employee system builds in a set of incentives to stay on the job, accumulate a pension, and then retire," he said. "It’s not designed to provide a windfall by exploiting or creating a loophole."
Cohen said he believes deals that permit an educator to retire and stay on the job show why the state waiver system is needed.
"The notion of a waiver arose because of a need that could not otherwise be filled," he said. "It should be obvious that retiring and immediately being rehired is not how it works."
In April 2020, as hospitals experienced a surge in COVID patients, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sought to boost staffing. He suspended a requirement that public agencies obtain a waiver to employ retirees.
Previously, agencies needed a state waiver to pay a retiree younger than 65 a salary greater than $35,000 without any impact on their state pension.
"While the intent was primarily to recruit retired health care workers to assist with pandemic efforts, the suspension of the earnings limit applies to all eligible public retirees regardless of their job title," the New York State Teachers Retirement System wrote members in a September 2020 newsletter.
By the time Cuomo’s executive order expired in June 2023, state legislators already had exempted school districts from the waiver system for an additional two years — until June 2025.
In the five years before Cuomo suspended the rules, the state issued Long Island districts an annual average of 13 waivers each year to hire retired educators. Newsday’s analysis is based on a database of approved waivers provided by the state Education Department. The department provided the records in response to a Freedom of Information Law request.
To successfully obtain a waiver, districts had to show the state how they identified the retiree for the job, explain why non-retirees who applied were not qualified for the position and detail a recruitment plan to find a successor for the retiree.
The state typically granted waivers for a short period, no more than a year, and required districts to inform taxpayers of the retiree's compensation and qualification for a pension, records show.
To determine the extent that districts are employing retirees, Newsday obtained the payrolls for Long Island’s 124 districts as well as a database of retired public school educators’ pensions from the New York State Teachers Retirement System. There are 36,000 public school educators on Long Island.
Farmingdale superintendent Paul Defendini, who is also president of the Nassau County Council of School Superintendents, said in a statement the waiver exemption provides "flexibility" for schools that struggle to hire workers.
Districts also save money when they hire retired educators because they no longer have to pay into the pension system and likely pay lower health care costs than full-time employees, said Bob Lowry, New York State Council of School Superintendents’ deputy director for advocacy, research and communications.
The increase in districts hiring retired educators is "disgusting," regardless of school leaders' rationales, said Andrea Vecchio, a regional taxpayer advocate from East Islip.
"Education is supposed to be about teaching kids; it’s not supposed to be a jobs project, that once you get in, you’re in forever," said Vecchio, founder of Long Islanders for Educational Reform. "In the real world, a pension is supposed to mean that you’re gone."
She expects more districts to start rewarding educators by allowing them to retire but stay in their same jobs. "People in the private sector who are paying for this are never going to, in their wildest dreams, be able to do this," she said.
Another longtime taxpayer advocate, Fred Gorman, from Sachem, called double dipping "an art form."
"If you want to continue working, continue working, but don’t take your retirement in the middle because you want a salary bump," he said. "Because I have to pay for that."
But community members shouldn’t automatically conclude districts are wrong to hire a retired educator, said Jay Worona, deputy executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.
"Many people could argue that this type of situation may not look good ... but I don't think we can always presuppose that it’s set up to enrich that person," he said. "It could be set up to enrich the district’s opportunity to continue its continuity with a person who perhaps becomes somewhat indispensable."
Skeptics argue that, regardless of intent, double dipping is a misuse of the pension system.
Said Cohen, the attorney formerly with the state attorney general’s office: "If the school district or the employees cannot work within the system as it was designed, they should change it — not game it."
Among the districts that applaud the waiver-less system is Riverhead, which has been led for more than a year by two retired superintendents. The district leaders are working as interim administrators earning $1,200 a day through June, according to their contracts.
The board of education, faced with a district in sudden administrative upheaval, began the influx of retirees in October 2023, when it appointed two retired superintendents to “ ‘right the ship’ and get the district back on solid educational and financial footing," said Ron Edelson, a spokesman from ZE Creative Communications.
That month, the previous superintendent abruptly resigned and the district reassigned another administrator to home pending an investigation.
Riverhead's board responded by naming retired Three Village district superintendent Cheryl Pedisich as interim superintendent and retired Miller Place district superintendent Marianne Cartisano as acting assistant superintendent for business.
Records show both retired a year earlier. Pedisich has an annual pension of $241,683 and Cartisano receives $172,398. Messages left with them were referred to the district spokesman Edelson, who called them "two of the most experienced, respected and successful educational leaders in that region."
Edelson said the no-waiver system "expedited" Riverhead's hiring process.
"Having these two extraordinary educational leaders steering the ship has made a world of difference in terms of the educational and financial health of the district as well as faculty and staff morale," he said.
The district announced plans this month to hire a permanent superintendent next year.
Pedisich totaled more than $450,000 between her paycheck and pension last school year, the most among the 51 retired educators who would have required a state waiver under the previous rules. Three others grossed more than $400,000 between their district pay and pensions.
Other districts cite the system for helping them hire retired educators quickly for what officials describe as hard-to-fill positions.
The Island Park district had an opening for a school business administrator in July 2022, just as the district began navigating the tax implications of Nassau’s settlement with Long Island Power Authority that nearly cut in half the taxes for two power stations.
The district quickly hired recent retiree Salvatore Carambia as an interim, and superintendent Vincent Randazzo said Carambia’s experience was integral in the district’s handling of "potentially devastating financial consequences."
Carambia retired from Freeport in 2021 after two decades as a business administrator in several districts. His application for the interim position is dated the same July 2022 day that the board approved his contract, records show.
In a statement through the district’s outside public relations firm, Syntax, Carambia said: "I was aware that Island Park was seeking to hire an experienced business administrator to help guide the district during the LIPA power plant tax challenge settlement and I was proud to offer my guidance to a district in need."
A year later, the district removed the interim tag from Carambia’s title and agreed to a new four-year, tenure-track contract starting at $160,000, records show. His annual pension is $96,792, records show.
If the state returns to a waiver system in June, Island Park's employment of Carambia will not be impacted because by then he will be 66, and would no longer require a waiver to earn more than $35,000.
School officials contend hiring retirees benefit the students in the district because of their experience.
In the majority of cases Newsday identified, administrators retired from their district and then filled a vacancy in another district.
Mount Sinai took a different approach.
Robert Sweeney, Mount Sinai’s board president in 2022, said their longtime superintendent’s plan to retire in the near future prompted concern that they would also lose other top administrators who were eligible to retire at the same time.
"We didn’t want a sudden brain drain of all the talent and knowledge we had in Mount Sinai," he said.
So they arranged for three longtime administrators and its district clerk to retire, essentially in name only. The deals saved the district money, Sweeney said. Each person took $30,000 pay cuts from their district salaries ranging from about $170,000 to $250,000, records show.
The four made up the pay difference — and then some — through their state-tax-free pensions that average $150,000 per year and additional contractual separation payments from the district like accrued sick and personal time.
They are assistant high school principal Matthew Dyroff, assistant superintendent for business Linda Jensen, director of athletics, physical education, health, nursing, security, buildings and grounds Scott Reh and district clerk Maureen Poerio. They did not return messages seeking comment.
Sweeney credited the current system that suspended the need for a state waiver to hire a retiree for making such an arrangement possible. He said the state likely wouldn't have approved waivers for the three administrators under the previous rules.
"Effectively, this gave us the opportunity to strategically plan a transition between these different positions," Sweeney said, calling them short-term arrangements.
Today, they remain on the job.
New superintendent Christine Criscione, now in her second year, said she extended their deals as "a necessary strategy to maintain experienced leadership."
"Losing other experienced individuals would have left a significant gap in institutional knowledge," she said.
Criscione extended Dyroff and Jensen’s deal through June 2025, Poerio's through 2026 and Reh’s through 2027, records show.
Criscione described the moves as cost effective for one of the county’s smallest districts because of the longtime administrators’ many responsibilities. Replacing them would be more costly than what the district is paying them, she said, because of the benefits savings coupled with having to cover their many responsibilities.
She noted that Reh oversees "athletics, physical education, health, nursing staff, buildings, grounds, and security — a role with extensive responsibilities that would be challenging to replace with a single individual."
Criscione also questioned the rationale for setting 65 as the age when the state would no longer require a waiver and noted that no one questions a retiree who goes to work in the private sector.
"Plenty of people retire and then go work in another job, and it's not an issue," she said. "Someone just decided to call it double dipping. It's not double dipping. They're earning another salary."
Three Mount Sinai school district administrators and a clerk retired in 2022 — but didn’t leave their jobs.
Their deals enabled them to collect six-figure pensions and severance payouts on top of reduced district salaries, together more than $1.6 million last school year, according to district memos, payroll and state pension records Newsday obtained from Freedom of Information Law requests.
And they’re far from the only retired educators at Long Island schools simultaneously receiving a salary and a pension, a practice commonly referred to as double dipping.
Long Island school districts employed hundreds of retired educators last school year, a Newsday exclusive investigation found, including 46 who grossed more than $200,000 in combined salary and pension payments and seven who eclipsed $400,000.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
Long Island school districts employed hundreds of retired educators last school year, including seven who eclipsed $400,000 between their district paychecks and pensions.
Districts say a shrinking pool of specialized educators has led them to turn to retirees, and the state made it easier by removing the need for a waiver to employ retirees younger than 65. That rule, initially intended to boost the number of health care workers early in the pandemic, expires in June for schools.
Schools employed 51 retired educators who would have required waivers under the previous rules, a significant increase. Previously the state issued an annual average of 13 such waivers to Long Island districts.
Districts say they do this because of a shrinking pool of qualified and specialized educators, and they have been aided by no longer needing a waiver to pay a retiree younger than 65 more than $35,000. The state initially lifted the waiver rule for all public employers in April 2020 to encourage retired health care workers to return to work at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and lawmakers continued the exemption only for schools.
Newsday identified at least 51 retired educators on district payrolls who would have required waivers under the previous rules — nearly four times as many waivers for retired educators that the state Education Department typically issued Long Island districts annually before the pandemic. Nearly half grossed more than $200,000 in total, records show.
Skeptics say the districts and retirees, while acting within the law, are misusing the state pension system, thus discouraging districts from developing a succession plan and allowing retirees to enrich themselves with simultaneous pay and pension checks — with the long-term cost falling on taxpayers.
"People have an incentive to sit and do the math and say, I can get a pension and a paycheck at the same time," said Ken Girardin, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative-leaning think tank based in Albany. He said the practice "goes completely against the original intent" of the state pension system.
46
Number of retired educators employed on Long Island last year who grossed more than $200,000 in combined salary and pension payments, including seven who eclipsed $400,000.
The current system that allows districts to more freely hire retirees — without having to lobby the state for approval — is set to expire in June, and state and local superintendents and school board associations say they would like state legislators to extend the rules.
The school leaders say hiring challenges for specialized positions such as top administrators and English language learner teachers are significant and adding experienced retirees into the mix benefits students. They also said they prefer to avoid double dipping.
"We’ve heard, ‘They’ve already retired, move over, make room for the next person,’ but sometimes in today’s day and age, there’s a dwindling pool to move on to the next person," said Robert Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association. He cited a shortage of specialized educators such as career and trade teachers and special education teachers across Long Island.
Hiring retirees could hurt districts’ stated intentions to diversify an educator pool that Islandwide is overwhelmingly white, said Dafny Irizarry, president of the Long Island Latino Teachers Association. Minorities represented 57% of Long Island's student body and nearly 10% of educators in the most recent state figures.
"It’s great they still want to serve our children — regardless of their race or ethnicity — but the practice might also be giving school districts an easy way out from the work of recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce and teaching staff that all research shows will benefit all students, white and nonwhite alike," Irizarry said.
It’s great they still want to serve our children ... but the practice might also be giving school districts an easy way out from the work of recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce.
— Dafny Irizarry, Long Island Latino Teachers Association president
Credit: Newsday / Drew Singh
Districts need a better solution than relying on retirees, said attorney Steven Cohen, who investigated pension fraud in schools a decade ago at the state Attorney General’s Office and now works in private practice in Manhattan.
"The public employee system builds in a set of incentives to stay on the job, accumulate a pension, and then retire," he said. "It’s not designed to provide a windfall by exploiting or creating a loophole."
Cohen said he believes deals that permit an educator to retire and stay on the job show why the state waiver system is needed.
"The notion of a waiver arose because of a need that could not otherwise be filled," he said. "It should be obvious that retiring and immediately being rehired is not how it works."
Surge in COVID patients
In April 2020, as hospitals experienced a surge in COVID patients, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sought to boost staffing. He suspended a requirement that public agencies obtain a waiver to employ retirees.
Previously, agencies needed a state waiver to pay a retiree younger than 65 a salary greater than $35,000 without any impact on their state pension.
"While the intent was primarily to recruit retired health care workers to assist with pandemic efforts, the suspension of the earnings limit applies to all eligible public retirees regardless of their job title," the New York State Teachers Retirement System wrote members in a September 2020 newsletter.
By the time Cuomo’s executive order expired in June 2023, state legislators already had exempted school districts from the waiver system for an additional two years — until June 2025.
The notion of a waiver arose because of a need that could not otherwise be filled. It should be obvious that retiring and immediately being rehired is not how it works.
— Steven Cohen, attorney
In the five years before Cuomo suspended the rules, the state issued Long Island districts an annual average of 13 waivers each year to hire retired educators. Newsday’s analysis is based on a database of approved waivers provided by the state Education Department. The department provided the records in response to a Freedom of Information Law request.
To successfully obtain a waiver, districts had to show the state how they identified the retiree for the job, explain why non-retirees who applied were not qualified for the position and detail a recruitment plan to find a successor for the retiree.
The state typically granted waivers for a short period, no more than a year, and required districts to inform taxpayers of the retiree's compensation and qualification for a pension, records show.
To determine the extent that districts are employing retirees, Newsday obtained the payrolls for Long Island’s 124 districts as well as a database of retired public school educators’ pensions from the New York State Teachers Retirement System. There are 36,000 public school educators on Long Island.
Farmingdale superintendent Paul Defendini, who is also president of the Nassau County Council of School Superintendents, said in a statement the waiver exemption provides "flexibility" for schools that struggle to hire workers.
Districts also save money when they hire retired educators because they no longer have to pay into the pension system and likely pay lower health care costs than full-time employees, said Bob Lowry, New York State Council of School Superintendents’ deputy director for advocacy, research and communications.
Purpose of a pension
The increase in districts hiring retired educators is "disgusting," regardless of school leaders' rationales, said Andrea Vecchio, a regional taxpayer advocate from East Islip.
"Education is supposed to be about teaching kids; it’s not supposed to be a jobs project, that once you get in, you’re in forever," said Vecchio, founder of Long Islanders for Educational Reform. "In the real world, a pension is supposed to mean that you’re gone."
She expects more districts to start rewarding educators by allowing them to retire but stay in their same jobs. "People in the private sector who are paying for this are never going to, in their wildest dreams, be able to do this," she said.
Another longtime taxpayer advocate, Fred Gorman, from Sachem, called double dipping "an art form."
"If you want to continue working, continue working, but don’t take your retirement in the middle because you want a salary bump," he said. "Because I have to pay for that."
Don’t take your retirement in the middle because you want a salary bump. Because I have to pay for that.
— Fred Gorman, taxpayer advocate
But community members shouldn’t automatically conclude districts are wrong to hire a retired educator, said Jay Worona, deputy executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.
"Many people could argue that this type of situation may not look good ... but I don't think we can always presuppose that it’s set up to enrich that person," he said. "It could be set up to enrich the district’s opportunity to continue its continuity with a person who perhaps becomes somewhat indispensable."
Skeptics argue that, regardless of intent, double dipping is a misuse of the pension system.
Said Cohen, the attorney formerly with the state attorney general’s office: "If the school district or the employees cannot work within the system as it was designed, they should change it — not game it."
Expedited hiring without waiver
Among the districts that applaud the waiver-less system is Riverhead, which has been led for more than a year by two retired superintendents. The district leaders are working as interim administrators earning $1,200 a day through June, according to their contracts.
The board of education, faced with a district in sudden administrative upheaval, began the influx of retirees in October 2023, when it appointed two retired superintendents to “ ‘right the ship’ and get the district back on solid educational and financial footing," said Ron Edelson, a spokesman from ZE Creative Communications.
I don't think we can always presuppose that [double dipping is] set up to enrich that person.
— Jay Worona, New York State School Boards Association deputy executive director
That month, the previous superintendent abruptly resigned and the district reassigned another administrator to home pending an investigation.
Riverhead's board responded by naming retired Three Village district superintendent Cheryl Pedisich as interim superintendent and retired Miller Place district superintendent Marianne Cartisano as acting assistant superintendent for business.
Records show both retired a year earlier. Pedisich has an annual pension of $241,683 and Cartisano receives $172,398. Messages left with them were referred to the district spokesman Edelson, who called them "two of the most experienced, respected and successful educational leaders in that region."
Edelson said the no-waiver system "expedited" Riverhead's hiring process.
"Having these two extraordinary educational leaders steering the ship has made a world of difference in terms of the educational and financial health of the district as well as faculty and staff morale," he said.
The district announced plans this month to hire a permanent superintendent next year.
Pedisich totaled more than $450,000 between her paycheck and pension last school year, the most among the 51 retired educators who would have required a state waiver under the previous rules. Three others grossed more than $400,000 between their district pay and pensions.
Other districts cite the system for helping them hire retired educators quickly for what officials describe as hard-to-fill positions.
The Island Park district had an opening for a school business administrator in July 2022, just as the district began navigating the tax implications of Nassau’s settlement with Long Island Power Authority that nearly cut in half the taxes for two power stations.
The district quickly hired recent retiree Salvatore Carambia as an interim, and superintendent Vincent Randazzo said Carambia’s experience was integral in the district’s handling of "potentially devastating financial consequences."
Carambia retired from Freeport in 2021 after two decades as a business administrator in several districts. His application for the interim position is dated the same July 2022 day that the board approved his contract, records show.
In a statement through the district’s outside public relations firm, Syntax, Carambia said: "I was aware that Island Park was seeking to hire an experienced business administrator to help guide the district during the LIPA power plant tax challenge settlement and I was proud to offer my guidance to a district in need."
A year later, the district removed the interim tag from Carambia’s title and agreed to a new four-year, tenure-track contract starting at $160,000, records show. His annual pension is $96,792, records show.
If the state returns to a waiver system in June, Island Park's employment of Carambia will not be impacted because by then he will be 66, and would no longer require a waiver to earn more than $35,000.
Strategically plan a transition
School officials contend hiring retirees benefit the students in the district because of their experience.
In the majority of cases Newsday identified, administrators retired from their district and then filled a vacancy in another district.
Mount Sinai took a different approach.
Robert Sweeney, Mount Sinai’s board president in 2022, said their longtime superintendent’s plan to retire in the near future prompted concern that they would also lose other top administrators who were eligible to retire at the same time.
"We didn’t want a sudden brain drain of all the talent and knowledge we had in Mount Sinai," he said.
So they arranged for three longtime administrators and its district clerk to retire, essentially in name only. The deals saved the district money, Sweeney said. Each person took $30,000 pay cuts from their district salaries ranging from about $170,000 to $250,000, records show.
The four made up the pay difference — and then some — through their state-tax-free pensions that average $150,000 per year and additional contractual separation payments from the district like accrued sick and personal time.
They are assistant high school principal Matthew Dyroff, assistant superintendent for business Linda Jensen, director of athletics, physical education, health, nursing, security, buildings and grounds Scott Reh and district clerk Maureen Poerio. They did not return messages seeking comment.
An agreement showing Mount Sinai administrators who retired and returned in the same jobs on one-year contracts that have since been extended. Credit: Mount Sinai Union Free School District
Sweeney credited the current system that suspended the need for a state waiver to hire a retiree for making such an arrangement possible. He said the state likely wouldn't have approved waivers for the three administrators under the previous rules.
"Effectively, this gave us the opportunity to strategically plan a transition between these different positions," Sweeney said, calling them short-term arrangements.
'Not double dipping'
Today, they remain on the job.
New superintendent Christine Criscione, now in her second year, said she extended their deals as "a necessary strategy to maintain experienced leadership."
"Losing other experienced individuals would have left a significant gap in institutional knowledge," she said.
Criscione extended Dyroff and Jensen’s deal through June 2025, Poerio's through 2026 and Reh’s through 2027, records show.
Plenty of people retire and then go work in another job, and it's not an issue.
— Christine Criscione, Mount Sinai School District superintendent
Credit: Newsday / Drew Singh
Criscione described the moves as cost effective for one of the county’s smallest districts because of the longtime administrators’ many responsibilities. Replacing them would be more costly than what the district is paying them, she said, because of the benefits savings coupled with having to cover their many responsibilities.
She noted that Reh oversees "athletics, physical education, health, nursing staff, buildings, grounds, and security — a role with extensive responsibilities that would be challenging to replace with a single individual."
Criscione also questioned the rationale for setting 65 as the age when the state would no longer require a waiver and noted that no one questions a retiree who goes to work in the private sector.
"Plenty of people retire and then go work in another job, and it's not an issue," she said. "Someone just decided to call it double dipping. It's not double dipping. They're earning another salary."
Jim Baumbach is an award-winning investigative reporter at Newsday, where he has worked since 1998. He spent two decades in the sports department, where he covered every professional team and league, including events such as the Super Bowl and World Series.
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Newsday Live Music Series: Long Island Idols Newsday Live presents a special evening of music and conversation with local singers who grabbed the national spotlight on shows like "The Voice," "America's Got Talent,""The X-Factor" and "American Idol." Newsday Senior Lifestyle Host Elisa DiStefano leads a discussion and audience Q&A as the singers discuss their TV experiences, careers and perform original songs.
