Project Most, a nonprofit that runs programs for elementary-age children in Springs and East Hampton, will for the first time offer a daytime program during the school year for Springs School students in kindergarten through eighth grade to supplement the two days a week of in-person learning that the children will be receiving.
Project Most announced the Remote Learning Lab over the weekend and will cut off applications on Friday this week. Information on applying to the program is online at projectmost.org.
"We felt a strong need to help families who, all last spring, couldn't work or had difficulty helping their kids with remote learning for a variety of reasons like language, slow Wi-Fi, or multiple children in one house who all need help at the same time," Martha Stotzky, Project Most's education director, said by phone on Tuesday.
The program will accommodate 30 children on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and all 60 children on Wednesdays, at the former Most Holy Trinity School in East Hampton. Attendance will be either Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday, opposite the cohort days the Springs School will offer this year in light of Covid-19. Project Most is also following all health and safety guidelines that the schools are following, including mandatory masks, temperature checks, social distancing, and stringent cleaning protocols.
The children in Springs will have their planned check-ins with their Springs teachers when they are at the Remote Learning Lab. "This we will supplement with STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] activities, art activities, yoga, gardening, and literacy for the younger kids," Ms. Stotzky said.
Project Most hired four recent college graduates to staff the program. They studied either education or psychology and would have been looking for traditional teaching jobs had Project Most not scooped them up, Ms. Stotzky said. Two of them speak Spanish.
The organization has no outside funding to offset the Remote Learning Lab, Ms. Stotzky said. However, there is limited financial assistance available to offset the tuition for the program, which is $210 per week, or $150 for each sibling if there is more than one child in a family.
Project Most will offer its usual after-school program at the John M. Marshall Elementary School for East Hampton children. The Springs School previously told Project Most it could not accommodate the after-school program this year in light of Covid-19 and an ongoing construction project. Instead of caring for 140 kids after school in Springs, as it had in the past, Project Most will only be able to take 40 children into its after-school program, which will now be held at the East Hampton Neighborhood House.
The former Most Holy Trinity School previously housed Springs School's prekindergarten program before it was relocated to the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in 2018. The Sagaponack School has also negotiated a lease with Most Holy Trinity; a single classroom there will house Sagaponack's second and third grade class, as burgeoning enrollment has caused that school to look for more space.
Ms. Stotzky said Project Most expects to have a waiting list.
"It's not out of the question that we keep looking for more space, if we can get some funding and the staffing that would follow the funding and finding a space," she said.