Starting next year, the president of the East Hampton High School Student Association will have a new responsibility: sitting on the East Hampton School Board as an ex-officio member to represent students’ interests.
A new state rule requires school districts across New York to add students, if they have high schools. “The student does not attend the executive session and doesn’t have voting privileges,” the district’s superintendent, Adam Fine, told the board at a meeting on Tuesday. He is working with the high school principal, Sara Smith, and the district clerk, Kerri Stevens, to prepare for the addition of a student. “We already have a policy in place,” he said.
According to a memo attached to the board’s agenda, the student member will “serve a one-year term during the school year from July 1 through June 30, beginning July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026.”
Additionally it outlines the two criteria necessary for the student member: one being that they have attended the school for at least a year; the other being that they “hold the current position as the duly elected president of the East Hampton High School Student Association.”
It is hoped that student members will be able to offer perspective on issues that directly affect the student body.
The board also offered additional details on a new shared special education program organized by the East Hampton, Amagansett, Springs, and Montauk districts that will operate starting next year out of the Springs Youth Association building on the Springs campus.
Mr. Fine said that he and Cindy Allentuck, East Hampton’s director of pupil personnel services, have been discussing this for three years, and that cooperation with the other districts has been “an absolute pleasure.” The goal, he said, is “getting all of these kids, as many as we can, back into the districts,” rather than sending them to programs at the Westhampton Beach Board of Cooperative Educational Services facility.
The money needed for the program is being pooled, and each district will pay per student, for example, if East Hampton has six students it would pay for the six, and if Springs has two it would pay for two.
“Would we be able to hire our own specialists instead of contracting out?” Sandra Vorpahl, a board member, asked. Mr. Fine and Ms. Allentuck indicated that they would be looking into it, and said that a full-time position would be able to draw more candidates.
Mr. Fine believes the space at Springs will accommodate two sections of special education students in the 2025-26 school year. “We’re focusing very strictly on elementary age right now,” he said. “So obviously as it grows we will need to find a middle-level place for the middle school age.”