Education

Months of strategic planning and detailed debate culminated in Tuesday's budget votes and school board elections on the South Fork, with positive results for the three districts piercing the tax cap, East Hampton, Springs, and Amagansett.

How much money does it take to run a nationally recognized Blue Ribbon school? At the Amagansett School, for next year, the answer is $13.44 million, according to administrators. Now it's up to the voters to decide the fate of that spending plan, which carries a tax-cap-busting 7.77-percent increase to the tax levy.

This year’s Bridgehampton school ballot features two incumbent school board members and two new challengers vying for three seats on the board. The candidates are Merritt Thomas and Nicole DeCastri Zabala, who are both seeking an elected office for the first time, along with Jo Ann Comfort and Angela Chmielewski, who are seeking their third and second terms on the board, respectively.

The Springs School District is the only district in East Hampton Town with a contested school board race this year, with two candidates vying for one seat: Barbara Dayton, the incumbent, and Dermot Quinn, a newcomer.

The Ross School’s middle and high school performers will bring the musical classic “Mary Poppins” to the stage of the school’s Court Theater tonight and tomorrow night at 7 and on Saturday at 2 p.m. Plus: Aromatherapy workshop, story time, art exhibits, guitar basics, and more coming up for kids and teens.

There’s a lot at stake in Tuesday’s school budget vote, not only for school districts, but also for Project Most, the nonprofit organization that offers after-school programs at the Springs School and the John M. Marshall Elementary School in East Hampton.

Springs students report the news of the school.

This year, school budgets across the South Fork are hit hard by an economic inflation factor of more than 4 percent, drastic increases to health and retirement benefits for teachers and staff, and the need to serve students still recovering, academically and emotionally, from the Covid-19 pandemic without the benefit of relief money from the state and federal governments.

Test scores unveiled Tuesday by East Hampton School District administrators show that in 2023, students in the Advanced Placement program made up for, and even surpassed, the decline in performance that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, posting results that on average also surpassed their peers across the U.S. and the world.

The Amagansett Library and East Hampton Library have programs coming up for kids curious about wildlife. Plus: A grandparents play date at CMEE, junior lifeguarding, baking lessons, skateboarding, and more coming up for kids and teens.

Small class sizes, extracurriculars, and sports are potentially in danger of being lost at Springs, the South Fork school district that stands out for shouldering an unusually heavy burden, as home to a large concentration of school-age kids while simultaneously having a pinched tax base and fewer taxable businesses. Its 2024-25 spending plan, carrying an over-the-tax-cap increase, needs at least 60 percent voter approval to pass — and there's a lot at stake.

The Springs School’s upcoming budget vote was the focus of an April 28 school board meeting, but before talk turned to that, the Journalism Club wanted to talk to the board and the community about how important the club is to them and why it matters so much.

Myriad rising costs are impacting the bottom line in the East Hampton School District, where, for the first time in a decade, and only the second time in the history of New York State’s cap on tax-levy increases, the district is seeking voter approval for an over-the-tax-cap budget plan.

Adriano Rangel, a junior who was East Hampton’s delegate to the Angelo Del Toro Puerto Rican/Hispanic Youth Leadership Institute in Albany, is also one of just seven delegates chosen to attend a similar program, the Somos Conference in Puerto Rico, in November.

School districts in Bridgehampton, Wainscott, and Sagaponack have formally adopted spending plans for the 2024-25 school year, paving the way for community voting on May 21 and public hearings next week and the week after.

The Montauk Library will cut the ribbon Saturday on its new tween room, a space devoted to the needs of students in fifth through eighth grades. Plus: coding for kids, community service events, book clubs, crafts, movies, and more for kids and teens.

Public hearings have been scheduled in each school district ahead of the May 21 budget vote. See when your district's hearing is.

“I’ve definitely had to answer questions” about the 2024-25 school budget proposal, Joshua Odom, Montauk’s superintendent, said in explaining the strange situation the district came up against this year — the discovery, by a school board member, that taxpayers were accidentally overcharged last year by approximately $56 per thousand dollars of assessed value. The solution? A tax credit for Montauk homeowners.

Taking risks can be scary and overwhelming, but Emily O’Reilly, the eighth-grade English teacher at Springs School, showed students that taking risks can be worth it. Recently, she “walked the walk,” so to speak, when she entered a poetry contest she saw posted in a local newspaper.

The unexpected resignation of Kevin Warren, who was appointed to fill a board vacancy in October 2019 and was elected to a full term last year, means that a school board race that would have been contested is now technically uncontested in Amagansett.

Since last fall, students from the Amagansett School, the John M. Marshall Elementary School, and the Ross School, as well as those in Project Most and the Marine Explorers Program at the East Hampton Town Marine Museum, have been learning about Indigenous cultures and applying what they discovered to hands-on projects that are now on display at the Clinton Academy. Plus: kids' movies, butterflies, poetry, tea time, and more coming up for kids and teens.

With last week's adoption of the Sag Harbor School District's 2024-25 budget and associated propositions, and the filing of school board candidate petitions on Monday, the official ballot for the district's May vote is now set in stone.

The elimination of four special-education teaching positions is still on the table at the Amagansett School, despite the school board pulling the official resolution off Tuesday's meeting agenda.

For the Springs and East Hampton School Districts, the good word came from Albany on Tuesday morning, just in time. The State Legislature is poised to adopt a new budget that preserves school funding to at least as much as what districts received this year. The news allowed both districts to make last-minute adjustments to lower their respective tax levies for the May 21 vote, though both are still over the cap.

Tomorrow and Saturday, the student actors and singers of South Fork Performing Arts will take on a beloved musical tale that needs little in the way of introduction — “The Wizard of Oz.” Plus: puzzles and chess, custom mug making, snacks and stories, and more coming up for kids and teens.

A representative from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office met with Springs Middle School students recently to tell us how dangerous drugs are, including cocaine, oxycodone, and marijuana, and especially fentanyl, which is so dangerous that even the tiniest amount can be lethal.

For the partial solar eclipse on Monday, many Springs School teachers took their students outside for the viewing, and they all stared up at the sky in amazement in their dark eclipse glasses.

Facing a perfect storm of cost increases in nearly every area of the budget, the Springs School Board is likely to adopt a $37.8 million, over-the-tax-cap budget, meaning school district voters will be faced with a difficult choice on May 21 when they head to the polls for the annual budget vote.

The East Hampton High School choir sang Friday night at New York City’s legendary Carnegie Hall for the Choirs of America Festival. About 300 people made the trip from East Hampton to attend the concert.

For kids and teens this week: art and community service projects, teddy bear tea time, dance, STEAM activities, and more.