Education

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.