A Stamford, Conn., man who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drunken driving earlier this year following a June 2014 crash on Napeague, so angered the judge in the case that he was resentenced on July 30 to nine months in jail.

Three months after the accident, in which Sidney R. Hughes, a motorcyclist, was severely injured and underwent multiple operations, a grand jury indicted the driver, Jason E. Monet, 44, for assault in the second degree, a felony, among other felony charges. East Hampton Town police said at the time that Mr. Monet’s westbound 2013 BMW had swerved across Route 27 in front of Sidney R. Hughes’s 2005 Yamaha, which was headed east, to turn in to the Ocean Vista Resort, where he was staying. Police tracked the BMW to the resort’s parking lot by following a trail of parts and fluid from the wrecked but still moving BMW.

Mr. Monet’s lawyer, Barry S. Jacobson, said following the indictment that he was happy to see the case move to the courtroom of State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho in Central Islip, as his client could not get a fair trial in East Hampton. He said many angry members of the Enders East Motorcycle Club would have shown up in support of their fellow member, a Montauk resident who has since left the area, had Mr. Monet appeared in justice court here.

The case dragged on, with nine appearances before Justice Camacho. According to Jim Barr, president of American Bikers for Awareness, Training, and Education, an advocacy group that continued to monitor the proceedings, contributing to the delay was the fact that there were no witnesses to the accident.

On April 17, Mr. Jacobson stipulated that his client would plead guilty to misdemeanor drunken driving in exchange for the dismissal of the three felony charges, the most serious of which could have sent him to prison for up to seven years. Mr. Monet was given a conditional discharge, requiring him to meet regularly with a probation officer and to have an interlock device on his car.

According to Robert Clifford, spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota, that device caught Mr. Monet “on multiple occasions, trying to drive while impaired or intoxicated, in June of this year.” The defendant told his probation officer that “he had been painting, and the fumes from the paint caused the interlock to register an alcohol reading.”

On another occasion, Mr. Clifford said on Tuesday, Mr. Monet, who owns a hair salon in Stamford, told the officer that the interlock was recording alcohol in his system due to “hair product fumes.”

On July 14, Justice Camacho had had enough. According to Mr. Clifford, he “remanded Monet to the county jail due to the violations, and the preposterous explanations he gave to probation and the court.”

“On July 30, the defendant admitted to the violations of his conditional discharge conditions, specifically that on numerous occasions he attempted to operate his vehicle with greater than a 0.02 [blood-alcohol level] and consequently was locked out of operating his vehicle by the ignition interlock device,” Mr. Clifford wrote in an email.

Justice Camacho then sentenced Mr. Monet to the nine-month term in the county jail in Yaphank, where he will be expected to participate in an alcohol treatment program. He began serving his term immediately after the sentence was pronounced.

Sag Harbor students will get an extra 10 minutes of sleep this school year. The school board approved new start times for the district at its meeting on Monday, amid research that shows it is unhealthy to start school before 8 a.m.

“This is a small step in what is going to be a journey,” Chris Tice, a board member, said.

Before the vote, however, the board received an overwhelming response that 10 minutes didn’t seem significant enough to warrant a change and therefore shouldn’t be implemented.

The members spent 150 hours last year trying to determine new start times, a board member said, and didn’t seem deterred. “This is at least an improvement,” Ms. Tice said.

For months, the board compiled transportation statistics, several options for later start times, potential costs, and comments about how to work the timing in conjunction with athletics practices and competitions.

In a presentation in December following several meetings about the later times, board members quoted an August 2014 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics that said that the sleep cycle begins to shift two hours later when puberty starts.

“The research is clear that adolescents who get enough sleep have a reduced risk of being overweight or suffering depression, are less likely to be involved in automobile accidents, and have better grades, higher standardized test scores, and an overall better quality of life,” the report said.

According to a National Sleep Foundation survey conducted in 2014, 60 percent of children under the age of 18 complained of tiredness throughout the day and 15 percent fell asleep at school.

Effective in September, the Pierson Middle and High School will begin at 7:35 a.m. and end at 2:36 p.m.; the elementary school will start at 8:45 a.m. with dismissal at 3:20 p.m.; the prekindergarten morning session will run from 8:50 to 11:30 a.m., and the afternoon pre-K session will be from 12:30 to 3:10 p.m.

The start and end times have shifted only 10 minutes for now, but that ­doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t change more in the future. Diana Kolhoff, a board member, suggested asking residents what they would be willing to pay for and support. The board had projected an increase of either $35 or $70 in a taxpayer’s bill, depending on which of two options for even later start times might be adopted, for extra buses and bus drivers’ salaries.

The board wants to continue to modify the schedule as needed and sees it as an ongoing project. “I think we ­shouldn’t stop looking at this,” Ms. Kolhoff said.

Heading into the 2015-16 school year, the Amagansett School will have a new principal for the third year in a row. In a letter to parents on July 28, Eleanor Tritt, the district superintendent, announced that Brigit DiPrimo is leaving Amagansett following an appointment in a district in western Suffolk.

Maria Dorr, who has been the Amagansett School’s director of pupil services, was named acting principal at a school board meeting on Tuesday.

  Before Ms. DiPrimo was hired last year, Robert Brisbane had been principal from May 2013 to June 2014. The Star reported at that time that he was leaving the district because traveling from his UpIsland home had become an issue. He subsequently accepted a position in the Roosevelt School District. In her letter, Mrs. Tritt said Ms. DiPromo was leaving for a similar reason.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting Tom Lamorgese was appointed as what Mrs. Tritt described as an “independent evaluator.”  He will “assist with a variety of administrative responsibilities” that had previously been Ms. Dorr’s, and also will oversee the new teacher evaluation system mandated by the state.

Mr. Lamorgese, a retired principal who last worked in the East Hampton School District, helped in Amagansett during Ms. DiPrimo’s transition to the district. Mrs. Tritt said Tuesday that in addition to bringing in Mr. Lamorgese once again, she would personally absorb some of the duties of the director of pupil services. Kaitlin Roessle-Meerman, the school psychologist, is to take on some responsibilities pertaining to special education and other support services. 

“We’re going to be divvying up responsibilities between other people, picking up bits and pieces, and seeing how we function that way. We have great teamwork in this district. Everyone pitches in to get everything done,” Mrs. Tritt said, adding that the district would take a wait-and-see approach rather than immediately hire a replacement for Mrs. Dorr.

“I appreciate your understanding and assure you that your children will continue to receive the attention, support, and care we all expect,” Mrs. Tritt said in her letter.

On Tuesday, the board also approved a part-time library media specialist following a search that took about a year. The district also accepted the resignation of a Spanish teacher. Mrs. Tritt indicated that one of the district’s new substitute teachers may eventually be eligible for the position.

Before the meeting ended, Ashley Blackburn, co-president of the Amagansett Teachers Association, took issue with recent physical changes in the building that were made without consulting the teaching staff.

“If there are any future plans like the art room being reconstructed or . . . the computer lab being reconstructed, we ask that a committee is formed to determine long-range plans that will benefit all students and staff,” she said.

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This article has been updated. The original version in print and online said that the Spanish teacher had resigned because her hours had been cut. That was not the case.

As in many other areas across America, plastic cups are ubiquitous on the South Fork. The Sloppy Tuna pours electric blue concoctions in them. The Surf Lodge presents stirred margaritas in them. (To which one customer complained on Yelp, “No shot. I’m paying $15 and you’re trying to serve it to me in anything less than a cocktail tumbler?”) They’re fixtures at bars, beaches, and at pool parties, part of the 33 million tons of plastic waste that Americans generate annually, according to 2013 figures from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now, in a time of increasing environmental awareness, some businesses prefer an eco-friendly cup. If you’re sipping from a sustainable plastic cup on the South Fork, chances are it’s the Greenware one, stamped with a swirly blue and green yin yang. It’s compostable and made from biopolymer, a molecule constructed from living organisms.

Christy Cober, the director of operations at Honest Man, the company that manages Townline BBQ, La Fondita, Rowdy Hall, and Nick and Toni’s, said she is a fan of these cups, which are used at Honest Man’s takeout spots. They are durable, but “They break down easily.”

But a 2013 Stony Brook University report that examined sustainable cups concluded, “At best, degradable plastics only create small, insignificant benefits in other waste management processes.”

David Tonjes, a professor who prepared the report, explained that these cups need temperatures of over 150 degrees to degrade, which typically only occurs in large processing centers.

“None of East Hampton’s garbage that I know of goes to these industrial sites,” he said. Furthermore, these plastics could take as long as a century to break down.

Deborah Klughers, an East Hampton Town trustee who has been a vocal anti-litter and environmental advocate, said she could not fathom why using plastic would be considered acceptable at dine-in restaurants.

Some places cannot run a dishwasher because of constraints imposed by their permits. Bostwick’s Chowder House in East Hampton uses disposable cups and utensils because its cesspools would not be able to handle the heavy use of a dishwasher. The same is true of a number of casual restaurants in environmentally sensitive areas.

Frieda Reichert, the general manager at the Hideaway, said the town prohibited the restaurant from having a dishwasher because of its proximity to the water.

“We try to go as green as we can afford,” she said, explaining that the Hideaway uses Greenware for orange juice and coffee, but regular plastic for alcoholic drinks.

Additionally, limited space and money can mean forgoing recycling. Townline BBQ in Sagaponack and Bostwick’s can’t fit a receptacle on their properties. The Hideaway tosses its cups as well. Ms. Reichert said it would be too costly to hire someone to rinse and separate the plastics then drive to the recycling center. (At the East Hampton Town centers in Montauk and East Hampton, only number 1 and 2 plastic are accepted for recycling, and most of the cups used in restaurants and bars and available at local supermarkets do not fall into those categories.)

Ms. Cober echoed Ms. Reichart’s sentiment. “I can’t imagine that any restaurant at volume is doing that,” she said. She said Townline puts faith in Winter Brothers, its carting company, to sort for them.

Councilwoman Sylvia Overby acknowledged this system, while better than nothing, is not as effective as sorting materials firsthand. 

The East Hampton Town Sanitation Department also has a space problem. Stephen Lynch, the commissioner of public works (and also the town’s highway superintendent), said the building is too small to recycle all that can be recycled.

 “Our facility wouldn’t be big enough to handle all the commercial waste in town,” he said.  

On Aug. 4, its plastics receptacle was brimming with empty milk gallons and bottles, while the others appeared emptier. But in 2014, it only received 76,380 pounds of plastic compared to about 1.09 million pounds of cardboard, 782,800 pounds of mixed paper, and 480,540 pounds of newspapers.

“People don’t recycle the way they should. I’m sure there’s a lot of plastic and paper and even cardboard in these bags,” Mr. Lynch said about the household garbage being dumped.

The department does not have the resources to comb through and pick out the recyclables. It would require at least 15 to 20 more workers and a conveyer belt.

Right now, 17 employees oversee the stations and run the facilities. One person works at the Montauk transfer station, but Mr. Lynch acknowledged if budget allowed, there should really be two employees. He estimated it could cost a few million dollars to overhaul and improve the current system.

“Our facility is too small,” he said. “If you don’t have the people, how do you do it?”

The town also sends plastic waste to Winter Brothers because the market for it is so poor, since China’s economy is faltering and that is where most of materials would go.

Dakota Craine, an owner of Lisa’s Lovely Organics, lives on the far side of town and grumbled about the 15-minute drive to the recycling center on Springs-Fireplace Road. She visits about once a week, but does not recycle plastics, only aluminum and cans. In her shop, she uses compostable plastic cups, but throws them in the garbage instead of her compost bin. 

“I think it would be easier for the locals if there was a garbage pickup,” she said.

Some efforts to help the South Fork cut back on its plastic waste have been successful. Bans on single-use plastic bags have been in effect for several years in certain South Fork municipalities and will go into effect in others later this year. Southampton Town implemented theirs in April, Sag Harbor enforced one on June 1, and East Hampton Town will begin forbidding them on Sept. 22. Ms. Overby, who is also a part of the litter committee, said there are no current efforts to rein in the use of plastic cups.

She would like to see recycling containers on the streets, particularly ones made from metal, not, ironically, plastic.

“We don’t have the manpower to handle these containers,” she said. The town would need to hire more workers and trucks. Their budget is tight and the 2-percent tax cap limits what services can be accommodated in the town budget.

As a clampdown on what Montauk residents have described as out-of-control partying in their hamlet continues this summer, Drew Doscher, an owner of the Sloppy Tuna in Montauk, a focus of numerous complaints, has sued East Hampton Town and Thomas Baker, a town fire marshal, for $2 million in damages.

The suit seeks $1 million from the town and $1 million from Mr. Baker for “intentional government overreaching and misconduct” in 2012, when Mr. Doscher and other partners in the club were cited for exceeding occupancy limits, and the town tried, and failed, to obtain a court order to shut the Sloppy Tuna down.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 3 on Mr. Doscher’s behalf by Lawrence Kelly, a Bayport attorney who also represents the Memory Motel in Montauk and other East Hampton entities, claims that actions by the town and Mr. Baker violated Mr. Doscher’s Constitutional rights of freedom of association, freedom of speech, and rights to due process and equal protection, and caused economic loss and suffering.

When Mr. Doscher and his partners obtained a building permit for renovations to the club in March 2012, the legal occupancy of the building was set at 263 — itself intentionally lower than what should have been allowed, the lawsuit claims.

Mr. Kelly wrote that when Mr. Baker, in his capacity as fire marshal, later informed Mr. Doscher, who he said spent more than $1 million on the renovations, that the building’s new occupancy maximum was 99 people, it was “an intentional deprivation” of the landowner’s due process and vested property rights.

The higher occupancy limit, set under a previous certificate of occupancy issued in 2006, should have continued, the lawsuit says.

The suit also charges that the town failed to provide feedback to the club owners on their building plans, and that Mr. Baker failed to inform them that the New York State Uniform Building Code held sway over occupancy numbers and allows for an appeals process regarding that figure.

The lawsuit claims that the town, under former Supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s administration, joined forces with the buyer of an oceanfront lot adjacent to the Sloppy Tuna and that the reduced occupancy limit grew from the town’s cooperation with him.

The man “got a discount on a beach property because it was situated next to a nightclub,” Mr. Kelly wrote in the lawsuit, quoting a comment made at a 2012 town board meeting by John Behan of Montauk, a former New York State assemblyman who said that “a neighbor complaining of the operations of a nightclub at the location . . . is like someone moving in next to a ranch and complaining about the smell of horseshit.”

The town, the lawsuit says, “looked to label Drew Doscher as not cooperative, unwilling to comply with their arbitrary and illegal occupancy limits, and otherwise sought to paint Drew Doscher and the Tuna nightclub as a rogue operation illicitly allowing untold numbers of nightclub visitors to operate in a way which bothered the poor unfortunate commercial real estate broker from Manhattan, who, by dint of some magical fairy dust, found himself on an investment property next to a nightclub.”

  The lawsuit takes issue as well with the town’s noise ordinance threshold for acceptable decibel levels and the way that noise levels were measured, noting that ambient noise levels at the club — the sound of the ocean surf, traffic, wind, and people talking — would themselves exceed the threshold, without music playing. With East Hampton Town officials redoubling efforts to ensure that bars, restaurants, and clubs adhere to town codes, the club has received at least nine noise citations this summer.

The town “followed a custom and practice of seeking to make any First Amendment expression, including the playing of music, illegal,” the lawsuit says.

The Sloppy Tuna was shut down for a time on Aug. 4, 2012, according to the lawsuit, when Mr. Baker found it over-occupied, and it was found that the club did not have a town music entertainment permit for live music.

However, the lawsuit says, it had already been established that the music entertainment permit requirement was not applicable to businesses designated as “nightclubs” under the town code, such as the Sloppy Tuna.

Nonetheless, the town sought, and failed, to obtain a temporary restraining order from the State Supreme Court shutting the bar down on that basis, along with the over-occupancy.

That led to a rally of about 80 Sloppy Tuna supporters who ferried to a town board meeting that year en masse, in black Escalades, wearing red T-shirts with the slogan “Tunited We Stand,” to protest. While they accused the town board at the time of targeting the club, Mr. Wilkinson, then town supervisor, announced that he had “sat with [the owners] and said, we will do whatever we can to help you create that place.”

Mr. Doscher acknowledged the meeting, but said at the time that “something changed over the last year” and that he felt there was a “personal vendetta.”

The lawsuit filed this summer alleges that, in the Sloppy Tuna’s case, the original occupancy limit was set using a strict standard to calculate the number of people allowed, while, for other establishments, including Gurney’s Inn and the Ross School, according to the lawsuit, more liberal methods were used.

The lawsuit notes that in 2012 the four individual investors in the business were named in the over-occupancy summons rather than issuing the citation to the limited-liability company that owns the Sloppy Tuna.

That, Mr. Kelly claimed in an email, was “a violation of clearly established law with a malign purpose” — described in the lawsuit as “to misuse perceived government power to raise the prospect of damage to the investor’s other and main sources of income, their work in the financial investment industry. . . .”

Naming Mr. Doscher in the citation, the lawsuit claims, was an attempt to “intimidate, harass, and annoy” him and the other owners who are licensed stockbrokers, which requires them to disclose to federal and state regulators if they are “charged with certain offenses,” according to the lawsuit.

Subsequently, two of the investors, “in fear of their investing industry status in the face of this local government misconduct,” divested themselves of the business, the lawyer wrote.

In a recent email to Supervisor Larry Cantwell, which was provided to the press by its author, Mr. Doscher said that “we have a target on our back.” He has hired former East Hampton Town Police Chief Ed Ecker as a consultant.

“Even after Supervisor Wilkinson attacked me in 2012 and lost, he asked if he could use me as one of the four economic engines of Montauk. . . .” Mr. Doscher wrote. The club was cited in a report that Mr. Wilkinson submitted, without the knowledge or approval of the other members of the town board, to the Army Corps of Engineers to help convince it to build a seawall in downtown Montauk.

Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Doscher wrote in the email, “was caught . . . hiding in the dunes in 2012 as if he was deriving some sick pleasure,” with “no warrant,” and “just shut down my operations and decided to unilaterally change my occupancy number.”

The club owner said he “turned the other cheek” and provided his financial statistics when asked, for the economic analysis the supervisor had prepared.

In recent years, Mr. Doscher said he has contributed to the community by donating to numerous causes, including helping to pay for the Montauk fireworks and providing landscaping around the public restrooms across from the club. He said he recently raised $14,000 for the Montauk Fire Department, which includes his own $10,000 donation.

“This lawsuit deals with 2012, but it is an important piece of the historical record in East Hampton Town, as it provides some balance to the simple white-hat-black-hat scenarios which have become all too common this summer,” Mr. Kelly wrote in an email this week. “Government can overreach, and the Constitution provides limits beyond which state actors proceed at their own risk.”

In representing the Memory Motel, against which the town has also unsuccessfully sought a court restraining order over an outdoor bar area in its parking lot, Mr. Kelly has raised similar issues, describing a meeting among its owners and town officials in 2010 at which details of the fenced-in outdoor area were agreed upon. The maximum occupancy limit that Mr. Baker issued for the Memory’s outdoor area, according to court documents, and “revenue from the outside bar and area was a substantial factor” considered when Mr. Kelly’s client purchased the property for $1.8 million in 2012.

The Memory Motel operated with the outside portable bar and temporary fence in place in the summers of 2012 and 2013, but last year, with a new administration in place, the town sought an injunction against the bar without success.

Two directors at an East Hampton summer camp were charged with multiple safety and crowding violations on Aug. 5 after the town executed a search warrant of a staff house at 17 Ocean Boulevard in East Hampton.

East Hampton Town officials said in a statement that the house was being occupied by 25 counselors working at the Hampton Country Day Camp, which is on Buckskill Road in East Hampton. The house is owned by the same Glen Cove limited liability corporation that owns the camp.

David S. Skolnick, 32, of Plainview and Doris E. Rosen, 60, of Jericho were each charged with 61 alleged violations, including failure to obtain building permits, missing smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, blocking fire egress from rooms, failure to maintain and enclose a swimming pool, and keeping garbage within the residence.

The search warrant was executed by the town Ordinance Enforcement Department, town police, and the fire marshal’s office.

An 18-year-old former counselor at Hampton Country Day Camp who stayed in the Ocean Boulevard house that was raided last week described on Monday the conditions she lived in.

Reina Humphrey, who asked that her hometown not be revealed, had flown from the West Coast in late June. “When we arrived, we were immediately brought to the camp,” she said. The teens were promised that they would have “the time of your life.” They were told, she said, that they “were the cream of the crop.”

She was assigned to work with 3-year-olds and enjoyed her days with the youngsters at the camp, where she said the conditions were superb. “It is a really good atmosphere at the camp.” It was the counselors’ living conditions on Ocean Boulevard, however, that drove her to fly back home after four weeks.

“I wasn’t in the worst house. Buckskill was the worst. It had mold,” she had been told of the house at 209 Buckskill Road, which is also owned by the camp, and also had a visit from inspectors last week. According to Dave Betts, the town’s director for public safety, by the time inspectors arrived at that house last Thursday, it, as well as another owned by the camp at 346 Three Mile Harbor Road, was being brought into compliance with the town code.

The town has moved for a preliminary injunction against the camp in State Supreme Court. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 25.

According to Mr. Betts, the investigation into the houses began when a diligent code enforcement officer noticed from the street that the property lacked a house number, which is required by the town in case of emergencies. That led to checking what appeared to be an unsecured pool, which led to interviewing occupants, which led to seeking the search warrant.

Ms. Humphrey described what she found when she arrived at the Ocean Boulevard house in mid-June. “It was like 20 college students had lived there, trashed it, and left,” she said. “It was clearly not taken care of, at all.” And that was at the beginning of the season.

“About 16 guys,” she said, were all put in one room. The girls were split up into smaller rooms, sleeping on bunk beds. She estimated the number of residents in the house at about 27 or 28, counting herself. With no extra room for their things, they lived out of their suitcases and trunks. “It was so packed,” she said, that it was hard to navigate through the house without stumbling.

Unsupervised, she said the atmosphere was “a huge party environment.” There was “constant drinking in the house.” When the residents, many of whom were under 21, weren’t partying there, they were hitting the clubs, particularly in Montauk.

It was not unusual for her housemates to bring strangers back after clubbing. In the mornings, she said, many of the counselors would joke about how hung over they were.

Beyond the overcrowding, Ms. Humphrey was frightened by the lack of smoke detectors. She described one night when several of her housemates returned from a club, and cooked something on the stove. “They were leaving to go to bed. The stove was still on.” Ms. Humphrey turned it off.

One thing that helped her get through was her workout regime at CrossFit Hamptons II on Pantigo Road. There, she was befriended by a couple of adults, Nicola Clayton and Shawn Studer, a trainer.

“They did not have a safe haven in place for their wards to go to,” Ms. Clayton said yesterday about the camp and its management.

Finally, on July 13, Ms. Humphrey had had enough. “I left in the middle of the night,” she said. She doubted her housemates noticed her leaving. A group was “drinking and having sex downstairs.”

She took a taxi to her gym on Pantigo Road, left a note on the door for her friends, and ended up at the train station in East Hampton, to begin her long trip home. “I left because I felt unsafe,” she said.

She was being paid, she said, about $100 a week, every two weeks, and was to be paid the remainder of her summer salary at the end of the season.

Camp officials have not responded to requests for comment on the allegations.

According to the camp’s website, Mr. Skolnick, a Cornell University graduate, has worked for the TLC family of camps for many years, becoming the East Hampton camp’s director in 2010. Ms. Rosen was also made a director in 2010. They are due in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Monday to answer the charges.

Jay Jacobs, the president of the TLC camps, was not charged, according to the town.

In the town’s statement after the raid, it said that most of the house had been altered without the required building permits or inspections, making for a dangerous living situation. The four-bedroom house had eight bedrooms, all with bunk beds. Among the charges leveled against Mr. Skolnick and Ms. Rosen was that the house had been improperly converted to a dormitory and that exit windows had been blocked by air conditioners. There were also five more vehicles observed on the property than allowed for a rented property, the town said.

The results of the New York State tests in English and math for students in third through eighth grade are in, and the scores show students in some local school districts making progress toward higher proficiency levels on tests that educators say are much tougher than in past years.

Overall scores for the entire grade third through eighth population, compared to 2013-14 results as reported on state report cards, show students getting better in math in Amagansett, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Montauk. English language arts scores in Bridgehampton and Amagansett have improved, while East Hampton's scores remained nearly even and overall scores in Springs and Sag Harbor dropped.

But the big asterisk in all cases is the number of students who opted out of the tests, which some local educators say most likely influenced the results and their statistical validity. According to a New York State press release, 20 percent of children statewide refused to take the tests, with numbers varying widely on the South Fork.

"We had a comparatively low opt-out rate at 15 percent, but that's still ridiculously high to me," Robert Tymann, East Hampton's assistant superintendent, said Friday. "It skews the data, which is important to us to be able to see how we're doing. The less accurate the data, the less accurate our analysis of how we're doing will be."

Similarly, Katy Graves, the Sag Harbor school superintendent, said she thought the opt-outs had a negative impact on the results. In her district, where the Teachers Association of Sag Harbor led a push for parents to have their kids refuse the tests, about 42 percent of the district's 490 students in third through eighth grades opted out of the English tests. In math, accounting for the 61 students who had waivers because they were taking the algebra Regents exam, the opt-out rate was 48 percent.

"We will never get the data we used to," Ms. Graves said. "That's information I'll never know about our curriculum, about how we're progressing through meeting the new Common Core standards."

Not only is the quality of the data in question, Ms. Graves said, but the impact on the students themselves cannot be ignored.

"It's hard because in seventh-grade math, we had 45 percent proficiency with 52 percent of those children opting out," she said. "Of the 33 remaining children, we're looking at 45 percent of them passing. Those are children looking around and seeing 52 of their peers are not taking this test."

Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of New York's Board of Regents, which manages public education policy in the state, said the board must now do more "to ensure that our parents and teachers understand the value and importance of these tests for our children's education."

"Our tests have been nationally recognized for providing the most honest look at how prepared our students are for future success, and we believe annual assessments are essential to ensure all students make educational progress and graduate college and career-ready," Ms. Tisch said in a statement on the state Department of Education website. "Without an annual testing program, the progress of our neediest students may be ignored or forgotten, leaving these students to fall further behind. This cannot happen."

State officials also released an analysis of individual students who opted out, taking into account their performance on the previous year's tests, and came to the conclusion that the children who opted out were more likely to have scored relatively low on this year's tests.

Students are scored on a system of four levels, with level 1 meaning "well below proficient" and level 4 meaning "more than sufficient for the expectations at this grade." Scoring at levels 3 and 4 together indicate proficiency, according to an explanation provided to parents by New York's Department of Education.

From among East Hampton and its sending districts, excluding Wainscott and Sagaponack because too few students were tested for the state to be able to publicly release specific scores, Amagansett has the highest proficiency rates in math and English: 56.6 percent proficiency in English and 63.2 percent in math. Highlights included no level 1 scores in math, and 54 of 60 students scoring at level 2 or above in English.

In East Hampton, 34.3 percent of the 587 test takers in third through eighth grades scored as proficient in English, up slightly from 34 percent in the 2013-14 school year, when 657 students took the test. In math, 42.4 percent of the 566 test takers scored as proficient, up from 41 percent the year before, when 615 students took the test. Highlights by grade level in 2015 included more than 23 percent of fourth-graders and nearly 20 percent of eighth-graders scoring at level 4 in math. However, more than a third of the students in third, fourth, and fifth grades scored at level 1 in English language arts.

Mr. Tymann said a full analysis will take a few more weeks to complete, but said the slight increases are encouraging nonetheless, especially when compared to state averages. Making that comparison, he said, "buffers" the results from the difficulty of the tests, which undoubtedly fluctuate from year to year.

"It's a more accurate way of understanding your scores," he said. "The tests do change. As the difficulty gets harder or easier over time, comparing yourself to the state average takes changes in the test itself out of the equation. You really can see whether your students were achieving at a higher rate compared to everyone else."

However, he said, the scores still indicate that the implementation of the Common Core standards over the past three years is going well.

"We've been training teachers on different ways of delivering instruction and a different focus for instruction," he said. "The students have been responding very well. My biggest barometer is when I walk into classrooms and see children learning at a more rigorous level and enjoying it. The test scores are one little indicator in how they're doing."

An analysis of Sag Harbor's overall test takers shows that of the 344 students who took the English test this spring, 39.5 percent scored as proficient, compared to 46 percent of the previous year's 456 test takers. On this year's math test, which only 284 students took, 50 percent of them scored as proficient, compared to 41 percent of the previous year's 403 test takers.

Broken down into the individual grade levels, Sag Harbor saw more 60 percent of its eighth grade test takers score as proficient. The district had 61 percent of fourth-grade test takers and 59 percent of sixth-grade test takers score as proficient in math. Ms. Graves explained that the teachers were given more time for math lessons this year, and in some cases added the support of a second teacher for what she called the "fragile learners." The decision paid off.

"If children have more time to practice something, they have more time to play with it and enjoy the curriculum," she said. "We checked along the way before moving to the next piece that they understood it. It was a pretty budget-neutral position . . . and it was integral throughout the year."

Math test scores in Springs stayed almost even with the previous year's results. Of the 327 students who took the tests, 33.8 scored as proficient, whereas the previous year, 34 percent of the 401 students who took the test scored as proficient. The English tests showed a sharper decline. Of the 381 students who took the English tests this spring, 33.3 percent scored as proficient, compared to the 39 percent of the previous year's 416 test takers who were proficient. Grade-level highlights included nearly 64 percent proficiency in eighth-grade English and about 41 percent proficiency in seventh-grade math, and about 42 percent proficiency in sixth-grade math. Officials in Springs could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Montauk students made noticeable improvements in math, where 49.3 percent of this year's 150 test takers reached proficiency. That compares to 44 percent of the previous year's 174 test takers. In English, 46.9 of this spring's 162 test takers reached proficiency, compared to 54 percent of the previous year's 182 test takers. Among the various grade levels, 50 percent of third-graders were proficient in math. Montauk's superintendent could not be reached for comment.

In Bridgehampton, an analysis of this year's test takers compared to the previous year's showed a small rise in English but a small drop in math. Of this year's 47 test takers in English, 21.3 scored as proficient compared to 20 percent of last year's 55 test takers. In math, where one student score was not released because that student was the only one to take the fourth-grade test, approximately 35 percent of the 40 test takers scored as proficient this year, compared to 36 percent of the 52 students who took the test the year before. Bridgehampton's superintendent, Lois Favre, said last Thursday that she had not yet begun to review the results.

In an effort to address a dangerous situation caused by patrons of the Surf Lodge parking along South Edgemere Street, and then walking alongside and sometimes in the road to and from the club, the East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to establish a no-parking zone in the area.

Parking will be banned on the west side of South Edgemere from just north of the club to just northwest of Elwell Street, closer to the downtown.

There is already a parking ban on the other side of the street.

While the parking ban will improve matters, said East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo in a statement read by Supervisor Larry Cantwell before the board vote last week, there are more issues to be addressed, including the problem of taxis that stop in the lanes of travel to pick up and discharge passengers.

"The business will need to come up with a plan for handling its patrons," such as opening its parking lot to bar and restaurant patrons in addition to hotel guests or providing off-site valet parking or shuttle bus service, the police chief said.

Representatives of the Montauk Fire District and Fire Department, who came in a group to the town board's hearing on the parking ban last week, underscored the immediacy of change.

"If we can't get our vehicles and our personnel to the scene," said Joe Dryer, the chairman of the Montauk Board of Fire Commissioners, "that person's not going to get to the hospital, or someone's house is going to burn down."

Michael Mirras, a 32-year fire department member, described a recent ambulance call, when he was delayed by Edgemere Street traffic in getting to the firehouse, and the ambulance was delayed in getting to residents who had called for help for a 1-year-old baby.

"So we can't wait," Mr. Dryer told the board. "We need an almost immediate solution to this. We need to get our people through now. Not only can't we get to the scene, someone's going to get run over."

With no sidewalks along Edgemere, and the road area narrowed by the cars that have been parking, large numbers of people end up walking distances from their cars to the Surf Lodge, which creates a traffic obstruction and worries drivers who have to avoid the pedestrians.

In addition to signs designating "no parking," the board should enact a "no-standing" rule to deal with the taxis, said Richard Schoen, another Montauk fire commissioner.

The fire and ambulance volunteers' comments drew applause from those in the Town Hall meeting room.

Laura Michaels, who heads Montauk's Ditch Plains Association, asked the board to monitor the effects of the parking ban. It could, she said, only push patrons to park along other streets, with the pedestrian-safety concerns to continue. Because residents along Edgemere might need streetside parking, she suggested the ban be for the summer season only. And, in light of a recent accident in the area, she suggested that signs outlawing U-turns be posted.

Another speaker questioned whether maximum occupancy limits were being observed by the club. In recent weeks, after some 300 Montauk residents flooded a town board meeting with their concerns about a host of matters related to the influx of club-goers and other tourists in the hamlet, town fire marshals have stepped up weekend inspections of the Surf Lodge and other venues, issuing summonses for overcrowding and requiring clubs to immediately rectify the situation, said Mr. Cantwell.

An experienced ocean lifeguard who has helped plenty of people in trouble in the water needed help herself on Monday while attempting her second recertification at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett.

Melanie Mackin was one of many taking the tests for ocean rescue certification. Some were first-timers, but experienced swimmers, others were veteran lifeguards taking the test for recertification, which is required every three years.

At about 10 a.m., cries of “Call 911” could be heard down the beach as lifeguards tried to radio for an ambulance. Ms. Mackin was struggling to swim or stand in the shallow water during the individual rescue test.

For this portion of the certification, rescuers were required to swim 150 yards out to their “victims,” who had just completed the individual rescue themselves, and carry them back to shore and out of the water on their backs.

Ms. Mackin’s victim became her rescuer when, after jumping from her back, he caught her as she fell in the knee-deep water. “I felt dizzy and nauseous and started to black out,” Ms. Mackin wrote yesterday. “Once I got my victim on my back, I took about two steps and collapsed. I don’t remember anything after that.”

He held her upper body above the waves as the other swimmers, all of whom had completed the test, ran to the shoreline and lifted her onto the beach.

She was carried to the ambulance on a stretcher in the back of an all-terrain vehicle. Several of Ms. Mackin’s fellow lifeguards walked behind the A.T.V. to help keep the stretcher in place.

“It was so great that she had, like, a hundred lifeguards there to help her,” said Peter Gideon of the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad.

John Ryan Sr., a member of the East Hampton Town’s Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad who has been training lifeguards for almost 50 years, said that this is the first incident of this kind that he can remember. “We give a test in mid-June when the water is below 60. Swimmers get hypothermic, and there you will see guys struggling.” Those kinds of problems are not typical in August, he said.

“I know that I shouldn’t have tried to take the test,” Ms. Mackin said yesterday. “I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, I was anxious about a lot that had happened that morning, severely dehydrated, and had low blood sugar levels, which I found . . . out once tests were run at Southampton Hospital.”

The strenuous certification continued without incident after her rescue. She received the very help that rescuers were there to prove they could provide, even in the most unexpected circumstances.

“Funny thing was, I wasn’t scared at all,” Ms. Mackin said. “Everything that I have learned from the time that I was 9 years old as a junior lifeguard, to now as a lieutenant at Kirk Park Beach, allowed me to never be afraid because I knew how well trained every other guard was. I know that every lifeguard at that test knew exactly what to do and they were able to get me into an ambulance safely and efficiently — something that I am extremely grateful for.”

She praised her fellow lifeguards, not just for what they did to help her but for what they do every day to keep all five protected town ocean beaches and three bay beaches safe. “It’s thanks to our chiefs — John Ryan Jr., John McGeehan, and Jeff Thompson — who put countless hours into this job to ensure that we are trained to our best ability. After Monday morning, I am overwhelmingly thankful for that.”

“The lifeguard program is just excellent and awesome,” her father, Barry Mackin, said yesterday.

The Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre, which has occupied the lower level of the Christ Episcopal Church parish house in Sag Harbor since 2001, will move to Bay Street Theater this fall.

“We’re growing up a little bit,” said the Goat’s founder, Liz Joyce. The not-for-profit puppet theater has become a mainstay for parents of young children who had few options for fun and entertainment when it first opened 14 years ago. Now Ms. Joyce not only performs at the theater but also takes her puppets on the road to venues across the South Fork and beyond, while also hosting visiting puppet troupes and performers from around the Northeast.

Joining forces with Bay Street “frees me to be more creative,” Ms. Joyce said over the phone Tuesday from the National Puppetry Festival in Connecticut. At Bay Street, Goat on a Boat can mount a variety of shows it could not accommodate before. Case in point: The introductory show, “Everybody Loves Pirates,” which Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers of Bar Harbor, Me., will present at Bay Street next Thursday at 11 a.m.

“I always wanted to have them at Goat on a Boat, but they couldn’t fit,” Ms. Joyce said. Bay Street’s larger stage can easily accommodate the show, which includes an eight-foot papier-mâché pirate ship.

She will have the flexibility at Bay Street to do shows that fill the big stage, smaller ones in which the audience can sit onstage with the performers, and some that take place in the lobby.

The partnership feels “symbiotic,” Ms. Joyce said. “We bring our not-for-profit to their not-for-profit and help them cover an audience they’re not reaching” — 3 to 8-year-olds. In the process, Ms. Joyce gets to focus more on the performances, puppets, and talent than on things like bookings and insurance and changing lightbulbs. “It’s very exciting because it just frees the Goat on a Boat up from all the admin,” she said.

After the Bay Street show next Thursday, productions will continue at the Goat’s old theater on Thursdays through Saturdays through Aug. 29. The official move to Bay Street will take place during Sag Harbor’s Harborfest on Sept. 12.

“We’ll have a moving party and a puppet yard sale,” Ms. Joyce said, and Minkie the Monkey, one of her puppet creations, “will do a show about growing up and changing, and then we’ll have a musical stroll down to Bay Street.” Off-season shows will be on Saturdays at 11 a.m. on holiday weekends and every Saturday in March.

Those who appreciate the art of puppetry know that it’s not just for kids, and Ms. Joyce hopes programming will include a puppet slam for adult audiences sometime in the winter.

Ms. Joyce will take the Goat’s Puppet Club for 5 to 8-year-olds to Bay Street but will leave behind Tot Art and other programs for preschoolers. “I’ve outgrown that a little bit,” she said, and now there are so many more offerings for that age group than there were when she started the theater. When she opened, the Children’s Museum of the East End had not yet been built, for example.

To prepare for the big move, Ms. Joyce has ramped up the programming at Goat on a Boat this summer, bringing in a different visiting troupe almost every weekend. Tomorrow and Saturday at 11, Theatre Deux Mains from Montreal will perform “Le Cygne,” or “The Swan,” a wordless ugly-duckling tale. The Puppet Company will visit from New York on Aug. 21 and 22 to present “Al E Gator and Friends,” a marionette show, and from Aug. 27 through 29 Bonnie Duncan will present “Lollipops for Breakfast.”

Tickets to shows at the Goat cost $12, $8 for children 3 and under and additional siblings, and $10 for grandparents.

Tickets for the show next Thursday cost $10 for children, $12 for adults, and can be purchased through Bay Street.