Watermill Center’s Family Day

The choreographer Alvaro Restrepo and the dance company El Colegio del Cuerpo, artists in residence at the Watermill Center, will perform “Animal Family,” a work in progress, during a family day at the center on Saturday. 

The piece includes music by Max Richter based on Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” and features Mexican animal masks, costumes by Olga Piedrahita, and paintings by Leopoldo Combariza. El Colegio del Cuerpo was founded in Cartagena, Colombia, by Mr. Restrepo, who is Colombian, and Marie-France Delieuvin, who is French. 

After the 1 p.m. performance, the artists will lead a mask and movement workshop. The program is intended for families with children 8 and older. It is free, but reservations are required via watermillcenter.org, as space is limited. 

Dia de los Muertos

The Montauk Library will celebrate the Mexican Day of the Dead this afternoon at 4 with music, dancing, and traditional treats. The holiday is a colorful occasion when families honor relatives who have died with festive foods, sweet creations, and music. Participants in this afternoon’s program will have a chance to sample sugar skulls and “bread of the dead.” 

The Art Nanny will be at the library on Saturday to lead kids as they create their own watercolors. A session for children 2 to 5 will take place at 1 p.m. At 2:30, the Art Nanny will turn her attention to children in kindergarten through fifth grade. Advance registration is required.

Library Sleepover

High school students have been invited to a sleepover at the East Hampton Library on Saturday beginning at 7 p.m. Signed permission slips to take part in this special opportunity must be returned to the library no later than 5 p.m. tomorrow. Participants have been asked to take snacks to share, sleeping bags, and any “bed assortments” they need for a comfy night. 

A Polaroid camera program on Monday from 3 to 5 p.m. will have high school students exploring East Hampton as they capture the spirit of fall on film (or their smartphones). 

Virtual Expeditions 

The John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor has invited kids in fifth through 12th grade to go along on immersive virtual reality and augmented reality explorations this month using the Good Expedition educational app. Kids in fifth through eighth grade will hit the virtual road today, next Thursday, and Nov. 29 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., visiting the Great Barrier Reef, ancient Egypt, the solar system, and the North Pole, among other destinations. 

Teens will get their chance tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 9, and Nov. 23 from 4 to 4:45 p.m. Tomorrow it’s the solar system, “Salem 1630 Pioneer Village” is the destination on Nov. 9, and on Nov. 23 they’ll get “A First Look at College.” Spaces are limited and advance registration is a must. 

A chess club for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade starts today at 4 p.m. at the library and will continue on most Thursdays through Dec. 20. 

On Saturday, the graphic novel club for fourth through sixth graders will consider Victoria Jamieson’s “All’s Faire in Middle School” at 12:30 p.m. The December novel will be “A Wrinkle in Time,” Madeleine L’Engle’s classic reinterpreted by Hope Larson. 

BMX in Bridgehampton

Blocks, Trucks + Art, which oversees a BMX track at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, is hosting weekend BMX sessions on the pump track this fall.

Sessions on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. are for kids 4 to 9. There’s an 11 a.m. to noon session for ages 10 to 16, and on Sunday, the riding is for all ages from 1 to 2 p.m. BMX instructors will be on hand to teach kids about navigating the track, basic bike mechanics, and how dirt tracks are sculpted and shaped. 

The cost is $50 per session. Spots can be reserved by emailing Angela De Vincenzo at [email protected]. 

Bulbs for the Holidays

An amaryllis bulb planted right about now should be ready to bloom for the holidays. With that in mind, the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons will visit the Amagansett Library tomorrow to lead kids in kindergarten through third grade in a bulb-planting workshop at 4 p.m. Advance sign-up has been requested. 

Open Studio for Teens

Pamela Collins will lead teens as they make collage faces during an open studio at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill on Saturday. Young artists can drop in between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Admission is free for students.

Underwater Vehicles

Children can learn how scientists use remote-control underwater vehicles to explore the oceans and then work with an engineer to design one of their own at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton this weekend. 

On Saturday, kids 8 and older will design and build their vehicles from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. On Sunday, also from 10:30 to 12:30, they will finish building and then take the vehicles for a spin. 

Ballots for Books

If Tuesday’s election had your kids asking what all the excitement was about, a workshop on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton may shed some light on the process. Kids of all ages can search through CMEE’s library for books about our country, voting, and related subjects. Then they will cast their own ballots for the book that deserves to be read aloud. A craft will cap things off.

The program is free, as is a book swap taking place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday in the museum’s lobby. People can take books they’ve read and pick up new ones. There will be bookmark crafts and apple cider. Admission to the museum is not included. 

New Art Workshops

New workshops for kids at the Golden Eagle in East Hampton include a sewing class on Thursdays, community art on Fridays, and morning and afternoon art sessions on Saturdays. 

Kate Gimbel Goldman teaches the sewing class, which meets from 4 to 5 p.m. and is for children 6 and older. Participants can learn to sew or work on more advanced projects like making a doll, vest, or bag. Ms. Gimbel Goldman is also teaching the community workshop on Friday afternoons at 4 for ages 6 to 14. Kids will explore different mediums each week as they make two and three-dimensional works. 

On Saturday morning, classes from 10 to 11 with Virva Hinnemo for kids 6 to 10 will explore “traditional and nontraditional approaches to art,” according to the Golden Eagle website. They will work collaboratively in a variety of mediums. 

Ms. Gimbel Goldman will share teaching duties with Michele Mott during a Saturday afternoon class from 3 to 4 exploring drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, and more. This one is for kids 6 and older. 

The community art class is by donation. The others cost $25 each or $175 for an eight-class card. Registration is at goldeneagleart.com.

Apples and Cinnamon

What could be better on a crisp fall day than the smell of apple pie? The scents of cinnamon and apples will be in the air at the Montauk Library on Saturday when the Baking Coach leads families as they make these tasty treats from scratch. 

The coach will provide everything but the rolling pins, which participants have been asked to provide. Each family will leave the 3 to 5 p.m. session with a ready-to-bake pie. 

A bilingual story time on Wednesday at 11:45 will include songs, finger plays, and stories in English and Spanish. Next Thursday, visitors from the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons will guide children in kindergarten through third grade as they plant amaryllis bulbs from 4 to 5 p.m. Finally, on Friday, Nov. 16, it’s Toddler Tango time, a music-and-movement program for children 3 to 5 and their caregivers. Advance registration has been requested for all programs. 

Inspired by Kandinsky

At the East Hampton Library today, kids 6 to 9 will explore the art of Wassily Kandinsky and create their own works inspired by his “Several Circles” at 4 p.m. 

Mason jar lanterns will light the way after a workshop on Tuesday at 4 p.m. for kids 6 and up. On Wednesday at 4 p.m., kids 4 and older can decorate cupcakes to look like turkeys. 

Folks from the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons will visit the library next Thursday at 4 p.m. to plant amaryllis bulbs with kindergartners through third graders. Advance sign-up is required for most programs.

Spielberg Movie Night

The Hampton Library in Bridgehampton will host a movie night for kids in sixth grade and above on Friday, Nov. 16, with Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” rated PG-13. The sci-fi action adventure is set in 2045, when people living in a world of chaos find refuge in a virtual universe. Show time is 6:30.

The Springs School Board was told on Monday that the school’s capital improvement project continues to proceed on schedule, and Principal Eric M. Casale and Superintendent Debra Winter explained to members what the New York State Education Department’s latest guidelines for the Every Student Success Act could mean for the school.

 Kevin Walsh, a partner in BBS, the school’s architectural firm (Burton Behrendt Smith of Patchogue), updated the board on the timeline to get necessary permits from the State Education Department to begin construction by early 2019. If the approvals come through by the first week of January, the board could solicit contractors’ bids for the $23-million project as soon as Jan. 7, and vote to approve the winning bids in February.

Responding to a question from the audience about what his firm has done to ensure that Springs won’t run into the same cost increases that forced the Bridgehampton School District to ask taxpayers to authorize another $4.7 million (they did), Mr. Walsh said he was confident BBS has built-in safeguards to assure the school “can maneuver with changing marketing conditions.”

Mr. Casale and Ms. Winter also updated the board on the state’s latest requirements for ESSA, the federal program which Mr. Casale said has essentially replaced the No Child Left Behind Act that was enacted by the George W. Bush administration in 2002. ESSA, he said, allows each state to set its own parameters for academic achievement and graduation rates, and then collect data from each school. 

 In New York, the accountability system is designed to identify “where schools and districts need support to improve” as well as “recognize successes,” he said. Underperforming schools invite state intervention if certain numbers aren’t met.

“This is going to be a lengthy process for us,” the principal said. “If we don’t meet the targets the state assesses . . . basically what the state is saying is if your school is identified as low-performing, then your school must ask the parents how to work together to make the school better. . . . And the state will also help those schools ‘adjust’ funding. Which is a very vague statement.”

That said, Mr. Casale added, low performance “is not our designation, and it never has been. . . . We’ve been hovering around ‘highly effective’ to ‘most effective’ the last several years. We just want to make sure we don’t get caught out.”

Springs school officials met with two members of the East Hampton Town Board last week and agreed to the town’s request for more detailed information about the additional $235,000 the district is seeking to help it upgrade to a nitrogen-reducing wastewater treatment system.

The town would like the Springs School to have approval from the Suffolk County Health Department in hand and provide a timeline for the site work before it decides on the school district’s funding request, Debra Winter, the district’s superintendent, said on Monday at the Springs School Board meeting.

“We are working to provide the board with that information,” Ms. Winter said.

The school’s 47-year-old septic system first began malfunctioning in 2015 and broke down in March of 2017. The district was forced to have the system pumped every 10 days after that, and finally had contractors repair or replace the existing system’s 12 leaching pools and pump last August. But the temporary fixes are only expected to remain operative through 2019, and there is widespread acknowledgement that the compromised system was affecting nearby waterways such as Accabonac Harbor.

The district moved closer toward a permanent fix in March when Springs voters approved a $16.9 million bond for the expansion and renovation of the school, which included an $800,000 earmark for the septic system.

Officials at the town, county, and state level have continued working with the district to find alternate funding, and the district was surprised in late July when that work brought results: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office announced the Springs School had been awarded $1.33 million in New York State grant money for the septic project through the state’s $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act of 2017.

“Now,” Ms. Winter said in a telephone interview Monday, “the difference between the state grant and the remaining cost of the upgrade is $235,000, and that’s what we’re asking the town to pick up through its C.P.F.,” or community preservation fund, which can be used for water-quality improvement projects.

H2M Architects and Engineers is overseeing wastewater treatment for the school district and is working with Stony Brook University’s Center for Clean Water Technology on ways to get nitrogen so low that it actually would be below the drinking water standards, the school principal, Eric Casale, said last month.

When the upgrade is completed, the school’s new system could reduce nitrogen concentration in Accabonac Harbor and Pussy’s Pond by as much as 94 percent and benefit the long-term health of Long Island’s groundwater, the governor’s office said in a late July press release to announce the Springs grant.

Ms. Winter said the district hopes to break ground on the new system next summer.

Bridgehampton School District residents approved an additional $4.74 million in funding last Thursday for the district’s renovation and expansion project, bumping the total funding for the project to $29.4 million and avoiding a new round of delays that could have pushed completion of the project well past the current July 2020 target date.

Voters approved the measure 132-98.

“Once again, the Bridgehampton community comes out to show incredible support for the students, staff, and community itself,” Robert Hauser, the district superintendent, said last Thursday.

The district will immediately bid out the project to contractors in hopes of breaking ground by November, if all proceeds as planned. The legal advertisements for the four contractor bids — general, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical — are scheduled to be published today. 

Contractors have until Oct. 9 to submit their bids, Mr. Hauser said. John A. Grillo, the district’s architect “is anticipating seven days to review the bids, at which time he will advise the board of education on which bids to accept.”

Mr. Hauser said he had been cautiously optimistic in the days leading up to the vote.

“I hadn’t really been presented with any negative concerns [from voters] — every indication I was hearing about the vote was very positive,” Mr. Hauser said. “I think people just want to see it started.”

The new bond issue will be combined with $24.7 million in funding that voters approved for the project in December 2016. The request for the added money happened because of cost increases during the district’s yearlong wait for the State Education Department to issue its building permit for the project. The district could not solicit construction bids until it had the permit in hand. Once it did, district officials and Mr. Grillo said they were surprised and dismayed when the construction bids came back 25 percent higher than expected in two separate rounds of bidding this summer.

“I’ve been doing this for 27 years, and I’ve never seen anything come close to this — nearly a 25-percent increase in two years,” Mr. Grillo said at a citizens’ forum the district held a week before residents voted Thursday.

Downsizing the project rather than seeking the additional $4.7 million in funding was considered. But William Jackson, the district’s bond attorney, said the district had to be careful about slashing features that voters thought they were getting when they approved the original $24.7 million.

“The general test that we use is you have to deliver the project as originally designed in all material respects,” Mr. Jackson said.

Mr. Hauser said the funding would add about $20 to homeowners’ tax bills for every $1 million of assessed value on their homes.

When the planned additions and renovations are completed, the 80-year-old school building — which currently houses 228 students in kindergarten through 12th grade — will get new science, technology, English, math, and music rooms, as well as a new regulation-size gym, locker rooms, and cafeteria. Part of the current gym will become an auditorium and the remainder a new school library. The school will also be able to move its prekindergarten into the main building and out of 40-year-old modular classrooms on the west side of the school.

“The architect has led us to believe it could take about 20 months, which means we would be completed sometime around July 2020, and students would start in the new building that September,” Mr. Hauser said.

Alanah Johnson, a high school junior who has attended the Bridgehampton School since prekindergarten, said last Thursday afternoon that she was hoping the vote would pass.

“I won’t still be here when it’s done, but I hope it’s approved,” Alanah said, standing outside the gym as voting went on. “This is a small school. Everyone is like family here. There’s been a lot of talk about the expansion.” 

Mr. Hauser said neither school officials nor Mr. Grillo had discussed exactly what would have been cut from the plans if the new funding had not been obtained.

“We would only cross that bridge when we had to,” Mr. Hauser said.

Parents and school officials who spoke at a community forum the week before cited an array of reasons why they felt the expansion was necessary. They gave examples of the overcrowded classrooms that are now divided in two by temporary partitions, children having to take tests in the hallways, and how the shortage of space constrained the school’s ability to add more student programming and activities.

One school district resident, Philippe Cheng, said, “It’s a financial question, yes, but more so it’s a human question. . . . It has a human face. Lives are changed here. . . . This school district is striving to make a difference in kids’ lives. See beyond the numbers. . . . Let’s all make a difference.”

Lillian Tyree-Johnson, the vice president of the Bridgehampton School Board, drew applause when she said, “We’re the only school district on the East End that has not done capital improvement in the last 25 years, and we are direly in need. . . . We’re asking for what we need. It is not a wish list.”

The New York State Assembly is accepting applications from college students for the Albany internship program in its next session, which will run from Jan. 27 through May 15. The program provides a stipend of $6,200.

The internship “offers college students a chance to participate in state government and the legislative process through a well-structured academic and practical learning experience,” according to a release from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. Many colleges and universities also offer a full semester of credit for the program. Students apply through their schools. 

Applications must be postmarked by Nov. 1, although extensions may be granted if requested by a campus representative. Details can be found online at nyassembly.gov/internship/, by calling 518-455-4704, or emailing [email protected].

Shark Tagging for Girls

Girls 8 and older who are interested in sharks, nature, and the environment might be intrigued by a shark tagging and tracking program just for girls at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. 

Marianne Long of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy will teach participants about how sharks are tagged in the northwest Atlantic and how data from tags are transferred to researchers. Participants will also apply model tags to inflatable sharks and have a chance to do a sample shark “workup.” The session is a Gills Club program, the conservancy’s STEM-based initiative connecting girls with female scientists around the world. 

Tween and Teen Open Mike

The Southampton Youth Bureau will hold a free open mike night for acoustic musicians, poets, stand-up comics, and other performers in 5th through 12th grades tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m. at Bay Burger in Sag Harbor. Reservations for time slots can be made by calling the bureau.

Teen Arts Council

Guild Hall in East Hampton is accepting applications for its paid Teen Arts Council through Oct. 15. Members of the council work to develop ideas and programming to get more young people involved and engaged at the museum. The program is open each year to 10 new high-school-age participants. They will meet weekly with a Guild Hall coordinator and remain on the council until they graduate. Applications can be found under the “education” menu online at guildhall.org.

Pizza and Pajama Night

Julia Donaldson’s “Room on the Broom” will be the book of the evening at the Children’s Museum of the East End’s next Pizza and Pajama Night on Friday, Oct. 5, in Bridgehampton. Kids 3 to 6 years old can listen to the story, play in the museum, make a craft with a Halloween theme, and eat a slice of pizza from 5:30 to 7 p.m. 

The evening is free for museum members, $15 for all others. Advance registration is required as space often fills up fast in this once-a-month program.

Wishes, Small Worlds, Tea

Wish bracelets, terrariums, and an American Girl tea party are on the schedule this week at the East Hampton Library. 

A session of singing and dancing for babies 1 to 3 will be held on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. Later that day, at 4, children in sixth through eighth grade will make beaded wish bracelets. “Once the bracelet wears and falls off, your wish comes true,” according to the library. 

Two-liter soda bottles will be the raw materials for a self-watering terrarium in a program on Wednesday at 4 p.m. for kids 8 to 11 years old. High school students can ponder the deeper questions of life during the library’s Socrates Cafe, a philosophical discussion in the young-adult room on Wednesday at 4 p.m. Kids 6 and older and their American Girl (or boy) dolls have been invited to a tea party next Thursday at 4 p.m. There will be crafts, cookies, tea, stories, and photo props. 

Advance registration has been requested for all library programs. 

Light Catchers

At the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, children 4 and older can make sun catchers with the planets as their models at 4 p.m. tomorrow. Designs with Perler beads that melt together when ironed will be the fun for kids in sixth grade and up on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. On Wednesday, children 7 to 12 will design their own light-harvesting kaleidoscopes in a program at 4 p.m. 

Children 4 and older can get a jump on Halloween on Friday, Oct. 5, at 4 p.m., when the craft is yarn-wrapped mummies.

Youth Theater Workshops

NexGen Youth Theatre, run by Bethany Dellapolla and Magnus Tonning Riise, is offering a number of performance workshops for ages 10 to 18 over the next several weeks at the Southampton Cultural Center.

The first, which runs for three Saturdays starting this week, is an introduction to ballroom dancing in musical theater. Participants will “learn how to be a good dance partner” both “in auditions and beyond,” according to the class description. While learning the basics of dances like the waltz, tango, foxtrot, and cha-cha, participants will focus on technique and the emotion behind the dance. 

Up-and-coming actors who want to fine-tune their skills can do so in a scene-study class in Southampton on Oct. 27, Nov. 3, and Nov. 10. Students will work on scenes with a partner and get coaching along the way. 

A short-form improv class rounds out the offerings on Nov. 17, Dec. 1, and Dec. 8. Young actors will work on “active listening, thinking on your feet, making connections, and open collaboration,” ultimately doing an improv presentation for family and friends. 

Classes at the cultural center will meet from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The cost for each is $250. Registration is at nexgentheatre.com. 

Member Appreciation Day

Sunday is membership appreciation day at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton. From 10 a.m. to noon, there will be games, crafts, food, and music for member families. Not a member yet? Sunday might be a good time to re-up for the year. Family memberships start at $110. 

Looking ahead, families might want to get in early on the museum’s field trip to the Milk Pail’s U-Pick Farm on Oct. 13, which is likely to sell out. The museum group will visit the Mecox farm from 10 to 11 a.m. for cider, apples, doughnuts, a scavenger hunt, and a chance to choose a pumpkin. The cost is $13, $10 for members. 

Salamanders, Ticks, Birds

While a celebration of the Long Pond Greenbelt is underway on Saturday at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton, the museum also plans two other family activities: a salamander walk for families with Andy Sabin at 10 a.m. and a Tick Wise program to build kids’ tick smarts at noon. 

On the walk, families will search the leaf litter under decaying logs for two of the South Fork’s native salamanders: the blue-spotted salamander and the four-toed salamander, “whose tail drops off when it is grasped by a predator,” according to the museum. 

The tick program will be led by April Boitano, a.k.a. the Tick Lady, in collaboration with Stony Brook Southampton’s Tick-Borne Disease Resource Center and East End Tick Control. An early childhood and elementary teacher, Ms. Boitano will talk about how to prevent tick bites, what to do if bitten, how to remove ticks, where to send them for testing, and the signs of tick-borne illnesses.

On Sunday at 1 p.m., a nature-drawing workshop for families with kids 6 and older will focus on birds and how they move. Tara Smith is the teacher. Advance registration is required for the walk on Saturday and the Sunday workshop.

A Haunted Library

At the East Hampton Library, high school students can earn community service credits by helping to plan a haunted library event on Oct. 27. Planning sessions are on Tuesdays through Oct. 23 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. 

Middle schoolers can unwind on Tuesday at 4 p.m. as they listen to music and color velvet posters. On Wednesday, kids 6 to 9 will listen to a story by Eric Carle and then make tissue-paper artwork in his style in a session at 3:30 p.m.

Monster brownies will be on the menu for kids 4 and older next Thursday at 4 p.m. The library will provide the treats, all the tasty decorations, and bakery boxes big enough for three brownies. Next Thursday at 5 p.m., high school students have been invited to use the library’s Breakout EDU kits, with games that require collaborative problem-solving and critical thinking to open locked boxes. 

Looking ahead, Hampton Strategies for Success will offer an ACT and SAT workshop at the library on Oct. 13 from 9:30 to 11 a.m. for high school students. 

Advance registration is required for most library programs. 

Spooky Tween Movie

The John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor will host a tween screening of “The Haunted Mansion,” starring Eddie Murphy, on Sunday at 2 p.m. In it, a family vacation meant to help a workaholic dad reconnect with his wife and children takes an unexpected turn when they stop off at a spooky mansion that turns out to be haunted. Advance registration is not required. Snacks will be provided.

Kids have been invited to dress in costume (or not) while they play with the library’s collection of dolls and action figures on Tuesday at 3:45 p.m. 

Virtual Fun

The Montauk Library will introduce kids 4 and older to its new virtual reality gear next Thursday at 4 p.m. This program is likely to be a popular one, so advance registration is required.

Bidding on the Bridgehampton School District’s $29.4-million renovation and expansion project closes Tuesday at 11 a.m., and the school board intends to begin reviewing the bids immediately, hoping to be able to award a contract before the end of the month.

District Superintendent Robert Hauser told the board at its monthly meeting Sept. 26 that the district’s architect, John A. Grillo, and its construction manager, School Construction Consultants, hoped to present their recommendations within seven days of the close, barring complications.

The district was forced to go back to voters last month to ask for an additional $4.74 million after two earlier rounds of contractors’ bids came back 25 percent higher than expected. Mr. Hauser and Mr. Grillo said the year-long wait for a building permit from the state, and late timing of the bidding window, contributed to the spike in costs.

Voters agreed to the increase by 132-98. It will be combined with the $24.7 million approved in December 2016.

“I’ve been in touch with the architect and the construction manager, and there’s reason to believe the bids should come in at the same price this time — if not lower — because we’re not changing the size or scope of the project,” Mr. Hauser said. “As always, we’ll believe that when we see it.”

Once the contractors are chosen and approved, construction could start as soon as mid-November and be completed before the start of the 2020-21 school year, he said.

Douglas DeGroot, a board member, and Ron White, board president, expressed hope following Mr. Hauser’s remarks that the school’s overhaul would not stop at the renovations. Both men have children at the Bridgehampton School, and said they support expanding its curriculum and hiring more teachers to give students more academic choices, especially during their junior and senior years.

The current student population, from kindergarten through Grade 12, is 229.

Jill Saunders of Cullen & Danowski, the district’s accounting firm, also gave a report. She commended the board for operating well within budget the previous fiscal year, and said it did a good job of funding its reserves in addition to paying off the $1.275-million bond for the new geo-thermal heating system that will be installed during the renovations.

Melissa Stiles, the business administrator, reported that the tax assessment districtwide is up for the third straight year, by about $500 million. The current total assessment is about $8.1 billion, Ms. Stiles said.

Scarecrows in Montauk

Camp SoulGrow will have a scarecrow-making session for kids 7 and older on Saturday from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at its studio on Carl Fisher Plaza in downtown Montauk. Sign-up is online at campsoulgrow.com or by calling 631-668-8800. 

Apples and STEM

On Saturday morning, the Children’s Museum of the East End will pay a visit to the Milk Pail’s U-Pick Farm in Bridgehampton for apple picking, cider, doughnuts, and an autumn-themed scavenger hunt. Participants will meet at 10 a.m. at the farm, which is on Horsemill Lane. The cost is $13, $10 for members, and includes five apples and a pumpkin for each child. 

Young “innovators,” ages 6 to 8, may want to sign up for iCamp, an after-school STEM program that will meet on eight Thursdays from 3:30 to 5 p.m. starting next week at the Children’s Museum. Campers will explore coding, robotics, drones, virtual reality, and 3-D printing. The cost is $250.

Workshops and Crafts 

High school students looking for some extra help as they prepare to take the ACTs and SATs can find it at the East Hampton Library on Saturday, when Hamptons Strategies for Success leads a workshop from 9:30 to 11 a.m. 

Also at the library this week there will be opportunities to make marbled paper, earn community service credits, do Halloween crafts, and take in a Harry Potter movie.

The marbling workshop, on Tuesday at 4 p.m., is for sixth through eighth graders. That day at 4:30, high school students with a passion for Halloween can earn community service credit by helping plan a haunted library event on Oct. 27. 

Halloween story time and crafts for littler ones, those 4 to 6, will happen on Wednesday at 4 p.m. Next Thursday at 4 p.m. the library will show “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” to families. Though it’s rated PG, some elements of the movie may be scary for younger children. 

Kids 7 to 10 can paint portraits of pets sheltered at the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons Adoption Center on Friday, Oct. 19, at 3:30 p.m. And who knows, their portraits just might help an orphaned animal find a new family.