School districts in New York State are facing another difficult budget cycle for the fiscal year ahead, with inflation still at challenging levels, dramatic increases in health insurance costs, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent announcement of changes that could leave some South Fork districts coping with as much as a 20-percent decrease in state aid.

“I’m very happy to share, so the younger generation wouldn’t say that it never happened,” Judy Sleed of East Hampton, who escaped the Nazis in Budapest in 1944, told students at East Hampton High School. “I just hope you don’t have to experience anything like I went through.”

Elizabeth Ann Fenley Grande, who worked as a transportation supervisor for the Island Park School District for 30 years and moved to Montauk full time upon retirement, died at home there on Jan. 21 after a brief illness. She was 81.

Anthony A. Remkus, who worked for 34 years as a bulk delivery driver for Pulver Gas, covering Montauk, and as a school bus driver after that, died on Nov. 29 at Stony Brook University Hospital. He was 67 and had kidney failure and multiple myeloma.