Ask anyone who went through Pleasantville schools between the mid-1980s and 2010 and they will know the name. Don Antonecchia was principal of Pleasantville High School from 1984 to 1995, then superintendent of the Pleasantville Union Free School District from 1995 until his retirement in 2010. Twenty-six years in the two jobs that shape a village's children, with a career in education that stretched past thirty-five years and included leadership roles in the Yonkers public schools before Pleasantville.
A brick in the Alumni Plaza at the high school records both titles and both sets of dates. The district's own fiftieth-anniversary history lists him as one of three superintendents across half a century.
A second career in service
Retirement did not take. Leake & Watts in Yonkers, the human-services agency now known as Rising Ground, hired him as superintendent of schools and assistant executive director, where he ran the agency's education programs including the Biondi School for students with special needs. He founded the Biondi Academy for Young Women, a program built on business and university partnerships to mentor and educate young women, and his hire was cited when the agency won the New York Community Trust's Nonprofit Excellence Award in 2014.
In 2016 he moved to St. Christopher's in Dobbs Ferry, which serves children and teenagers with special needs, first as chief operating officer and then as chief executive for four years before retiring a second time in January 2022.
Forty years with the club
Don joined the Rotary Club of Pleasantville in 1985, his second year as high school principal, and in October 2025 the club named him an honorary member in recognition of his contributions to the community and his commitment to Rotary principles. Service runs in the family: his cousin, County Legislator Margaret Cunzio, sits on the club's board, and in 2026 the two of them were the official greeters at the Pancake Breakfast, welcoming every guest to the cafeteria he once oversaw.
In pictures
Back to the board and member roster.