By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
LAKE ORION — Two new staff members were appointed during Lake Orion Community Schools’ Board of Education meeting on June 11.
Nicholas Coccia was appointed as Oakview Middle School’s principal and Toni Lefief was appointed as an Autism Spectrum Disorder teacher at Orion Oaks Elementary School.

“He is no stranger to Dragon Country,” LOCS Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Adam Weldon said. “He is a proud graduate of the class of 2002 from LOHS.
Coccia has been Oakview’s assistant principal for the last four years. He also was LOCS’s Dragon virtual and virtual learning coordinator from 2019 to 2021, and was first hired as a teacher at Oakview Middle School in 2007. He also taught at Waldon Middle School and Lake Orion High School.
Coccia earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Michigan State University, according to Weldon.
“I am super excited to take the next step as Oakview’s principal,” Coccia said in an LOCS YouTube video.
Lefief spent last school year as a student teacher working at Orion Oaks in a self-contained ASD classroom and learning resource center classroom, from 2021 to 2024 as a paraprofessional and from 2012 to 2017 as a teacher’s aid in Clarkston, according to her resume.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Olivet College and a Master of Arts in special education and literacy studies with an autism endorsement from Western Michigan University.
“We are very excited to have her in this role permanently in Lake Orion,” Weldon said.
Oakview is one of the district’s three middle schools and Orion Oaks is one of its six elementary schools.