Queens Courier Online: Star Of Queens...

David M. Quintana
Co-President, M.S. 210 Parents’ Association
Ozone Park

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT: Striving to improve the city’s school system and what he believes to be the root of the problem, Quintana has worked diligently to get parents more involved. He has been a member of the M.S. 210 Parents’ Association (PA) for nearly two and a half years and took over as the organization’s co-President in 2006. He is also the Recording Secretary for District 27’s Council of PA Presidents, a team of PA leaders dedicated to the development and improvement of new ideas to further its cause.

PERSONAL: Perhaps the main reason for Quintana’s deep interest for parental participation in public education stems from his two daughters, Kayla, 16, and Madeline, 14, who attend M.S. 210. Quintana grew up in Woodhaven and moved to Ozone Park in 1969, where he currently resides.

JOB: Quintana has spent the last 10 years working at Paul Michael & Associates, a collection agency based out of Fresh Meadows. He is the Regional Sales Director.

BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Quintana said that his greatest challenge has been raising Kayla and Madeline to be “good students, good citizens and good people.”

FAVORITE MEMORY: He reminisced about playing football in the area where P.S. 202 now sits and looking up at the cows grazing on the farm fields not too far away.

INSPIRATION: Quintana said that he draws a lot of his strength from living his entire life in the same area. The decades he has spent in Queens have produced an overwhelming desire to give something back. Watching his father at work was also an inspiration. According to Quintana, his father was one of the first members of the Woodhaven-Richmond Hill Volunteer Ambulance Corporation in the 1960s.

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