As school superintendents from around the East End discuss regionalization efforts, plans are in the works for a new shared special education program developed by the East Hampton, Amagansett, Springs, and Montauk Schools that will operate out of the Springs Youth Association building on the Springs campus starting in September.
Montauk’s superintendent, Joshua Odom, shared some of the details of that plan and another program discussed at the superintendents’ meeting with the Montauk School Board on Tuesday. The special education initiative is something Mr. Odom, a former assistant principal at Springs, said he is “very proud of.”
The program will allow special needs students from the South Fork who were previously traveling to the Board of Cooperative Educational Services facility in Westhampton Beach to have a more centralized spot for services closer to home.
School administrators have already met with East Hampton Town officials to discuss the plan, because, while Springs owns the underlying land, the town owns the S.Y.A. building. “The town is on board,” Mr. Odom told the school board. “Everybody just wants to do what’s best for these kids and make sure that they’re not on a bus for two hours a day to Westhampton, considering this is our neediest student population.”
“This directly benefits families and students so much,” he added later. “It gives these students a peer group and lets them be in their community, and it’s just a game changer.”
The second program is a collaboration with Stony Brook Mental Health, which is opening a new satellite campus in Wainscott. “All school districts in Suffolk County were presented with two mental health programs that they could buy into,” Mr. Odom said. “This year, one was through Stony Brook and one was through Northwell Health.”
After assessing both options, Stony Brook appeared to fit the Montauk School District best, he said. However, the program itself is mostly geared toward high school and older middle school students, making it hard for Montauk to fully capitalize on it.
“I was really disappointed about that,” Mr. Odom said, “because should there be a student crisis it’s a whole lot easier to go to Wainscott than to go to Stony Brook.” The program also offers parent and teacher training, as well as a resource tool kit.
So Mr. Odom decided to reach out to East Hampton High School and to Dr. Kristie Golden, the director of the program, and together they worked out a deal for the Montauk School to join East Hampton’s contract for a reduced fee of $15,000. Mr. Odom expects this to be in effect for the 2025-26 school year.
In other news from the Montauk meeting, Mr. Odom updated the board on his ongoing community outreach efforts related to the district’s proposed building project. He spoke to the Chamber of Commerce Tuesday night after the board meeting, and the Montauk
School will host an informational meeting on the project on Wednesday evening at 6:30 in the school gym.
At the meeting Mr. Odom will review the district’s renovation plan, which includes repurposing the existing gym into a performing arts space, building a new gym with a greenhouse and bathrooms, redoing the library, and addressing a range of other maintenance and repair issues.
Diane Hausman, the board president, said that she hopes the meeting will dispel any rumors going around on the project. People “will be getting the facts from the source,” she said. “If you can come to the meeting and really get the correct information that would be just so beneficial.”