Education

Lea Bryant, a health teacher at the East Hampton Middle School, has been named Suffolk County health teacher of the year by the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor is offering a number of new performance workshops for kids and teens starting in the next few weeks.

The Sag Harbor School Board on Jan. 13 declined to take a formal stance on proposed state legislation that would mandate the human papillomavirus vaccine for students — but not without a discussion of whether or not it is even in the board’s purview to take on such matters.     

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli has announced that the cap on tax levy increases for the 2020-21 budget cycle is 1.81 percent, down from 2 percent in the last two years.     

The 28th Guild Hall Student Art Festival aims to bring students’ artistic experiences together in a cohesive way.     

Construction crews working at the Sag Harbor Learning Center last spring removed about 300 tons of soil contaminated with arsenic, which school officials said likely seeped into the ground from wood treated with chromated copper arsenate that was thought to exist on the property at one point in time. 

As Monday is Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the library will take a page from his legacy when it hosts a “diverse book show-and-tell” on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. for all ages.     

South Fork schools have followed up on a 2019 New York State Education Department mandate requiring schools to test for the presence of mercury vapors in certain types of flooring materials, and documentation provided by the Sag Harbor and East Hampton School Districts this week showed none of the rubberlike floors in their buildings were emitting those harmful vapors.

East Hampton School District officials announced Tuesday they have planned a Monday closing date with East Hampton Town for the purchase of the town’s former scavenger waste site on Springs Fireplace Road, which the school district is buying for $2.3 million to build its own bus barn and auto mechanics classroom.

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will run free after-school art workshops for children in kindergarten through fifth grade on Mondays and Thursdays from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m. starting next week. Participants will learn about various artists and use the work of professionals as inspiration for their own artwork. Advance registration is required at parrishart.org.

Parents interested in more deeply understanding their children have several upcoming opportunities to learn from experts in the fields of education and child development.

Raquel Babb has always loved movies. Some of her favorites depict life in high school in America, and almost always feature cheerleaders. The only problem was that the Ross School, where Raquel studies, hadn’t had a cheerleading team since 2012.

There was no official “first flush” fanfare, but instead a simple announcement on Twitter last Thursday that the Springs School had turned on its newly completed innovative/alternative septic system while the students were on winter recess.

Adam Fine, who has championed school safety, academic growth, and mental and physical health for teens during his 10 years as the East Hampton High School principal, will take over for Richard Burns as superintendent in the 2021-22 school year, the district announced Tuesday.

Adam Fine, who has championed school safety, academic growth, and mental and physical health for teens during his 10 years as the East Hampton High School principal, will take over for Richard Burns as superintendent in the 2021-22 school year, the district announced Tuesday.

Project Most, a nonprofit organization that runs after-school and summer programs for young children, has announced that it will offer Saturday sessions beginning on Jan. 11 at the Neighborhood House in East Hampton. A full nine-week summer camp there is also on the horizon.     

The Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton will have another of its “sensory friendly” mornings on Saturday from 8 to 10.

Applications close on Jan. 6 for multiple adult education teaching and administrative positions at the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

High school students in grades 8 through 12 can submit applications for New York State Summer School of the Arts programs in dance, choral studies, media arts, orchestral instrumentation, visual arts, and theater arts. Auditions begin on Jan. 5 at various state university centers and nonprofit arts centers throughout New York.

Christmas came early for 10 teachers in the East Hampton and Springs School Districts this year, after the Greater East Hampton Education Foundation announced the winners of its annual grant program earlier this month.

Kids can meet the South Fork Natural History Museum’s diamondback terrapins and learn about where they live, what they eat, and how to identify them in a program on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. in Bridgehampton. On Sunday families will head outside to search for and identify animal tracks and scat, also at 10:30 a.m.

Larrilee Jemiola’s teaching career has spanned about five decades. The veteran East Hampton educator has seen it all — from major shifts in state education policy to movements in social-emotional learning, special needs programs, and support for children who are not native English speakers.

With the prospect of two full weeks off for the holiday break, kids (and parents) will be relieved to know there are some fun options for active time out of the house.   

Renovations to the new Sag Harbor Learning Center, formerly the Stella Maris School, will be substantially complete by Dec. 31, but Sag Harbor School District officials have announced that prekindergarten students and staff will not move into the building right away.     

The Southampton School District has joined the growing list of schools that have come out against a state proposal to make the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine mandatory for children born after Jan. 1, 2009.

Melanie Freyre was bursting at the seams with news she couldn’t share for months: The Bonnettes, a group of East Hampton Middle School singers under her direction, had been chosen to sing in the “Sounds of Christmas” performance series at Radio City Music Hall. They’d be an opening act for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which features, of course, the iconic Rockettes.     

On light of the difficulty in making and receiving calls, the Springs School Board weighed updating policy to allow students and staff to use the school's Wi-Fi network for personal reasons during lunchtime and other breaks, specifically because cellphone data connections are unreliable in the hamlet.

Families will learn how to decorate a holiday cottage that doubles as a craft box in a holiday workshop on Friday, Dec. 20, at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

Almost three years after the death of Robert Schneider, who was principal at Pierson Middle and High School for seven years in the 1990s, a plaque commemorating a major building expansion in 2003 will be replaced with one that acknowledges his contributions to the project.

Mold was discovered in several places at the John M. Marshall Elementary School in late August, and the East Hampton School District is almost done remediating the problem, a senior school official said this week.