Bringing a Book to Life

At the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton on Saturday, families with 3 to 8-year-olds will be treated to an interactive reading of Odessa Arriola’s “The Art Inside.” Ms. Arriola will read from her book, which was inspired by her own childhood, and bring the story to life with puppets and other props. Afterward, children will make paper puppets and crafts. The program runs from 10:30 a.m. to noon and is free, but advance registration has been encouraged, as space is limited. 

That’s even more the case for the museum’s very popular Halloween bash on Friday, Oct. 26. The party, from 4 to 6 p.m., includes games, crafts, a costume parade, and treats, and it usually sells out early. The cost is $12, but members of the museum get in free. 

Young Birders Club

The South Fork Natural History Museum’s Young Birders Club for kids 8 to 18 will have its first meeting of the fall with a new leader, Miles Todaro, on Saturday at 10 a.m. in Bridgehampton. Participants have been asked to take binoculars if they have them. While Mr. Todaro will take the lead, he’ll be joined by two expert birders, Frank Quevedo, the museum’s director, and Barbara Blaisdell. The club meets on the third Saturday of each month.

Also on Saturday, at 10:30 a.m., families with children 6 and older can learn to make animal origami, from the simple to the complex, with the museum’s Crystal Oakes. There is a $3 materials fee. 

On Sunday at 10:30 a.m., little ones ages 3 to 5 have been invited to join museum educators as they feed the resident animals, and in the process they’ll learn about food webs and the difference between herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. 

Advance registration has been requested for all programs. 

“Frankenstein Follies”

Stages, a Children’s Theatre Workshop, will present its annual Halloween show, “Frankenstein Follies,” at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor starting on Friday, Oct. 26. Show times are 7:30 on opening night, 2 and 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 27, and 2 p.m. on Oct. 28. Tickets cost $15. 

Halloween at the Libraries

Not surprisingly, there’s a decided Halloween bent in library programs this week, with monsters, bats, masks, and ghosts figuring prominently. 

The East Hampton Library will host a family screening of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” today at 4 p.m. On Wednesday at 4 p.m., a Halloween story time for 4 to 7-year-olds will be followed by a clothespin bat craft. Next Thursday, children have been invited to arrive in costume for a 4 p.m. session at which they will decorate trick-or-treat bags and paint pumpkins. 

Off the theme, sixth through eighth graders can use old CDs to make shiny works of art next Tuesday at 4 p.m. 

At the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, a bat bookmark workshop for ages 4 and up will unfold tomorrow at 4 p.m. The Halloween classic “Beetlejuice” will be screened at a movie night for grades six and older tomorrow at 6:30. On Tuesday grades six and up can use old books to make spooky decorations from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. There will also be two opportunities for mask making next week: on Wednesday, when ages 7 to 12 can work on Mardi Gras-style masks, and at 4 p.m. and on Friday, Oct. 26, when those 4 and older can sink their teeth into monster masks. 

Another Halloween classic, “Hocus Pocus,” starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, will be shown at the Montauk Library on Saturday at 2 p.m., and snacks will be available. All ages will be welcomed, and reservations are not required. Lori Hubbard will make Halloween the theme of her music and movement program for ages 1 to 5 next Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the library. 

And while it’s not until the following weekend, teens and tweens may want to start brainstorming now for the Montauk Library’s own version of the popular “Chopped” TV cooking competition. This one, on Oct. 27 at 3 p.m., is called Chopped: Spooky Edition. Kids in third grade and above will use mystery ingredients to make tasty treats to wow the judges.

Lessons about family rarely unfold in dramatic thunderclaps. But death has a way of clarifying what is important and what is not.

“I’d like to share something,” said a sweet-voiced 11-year-old boy with long hair spilling out of a baseball cap, in one of the art rooms at the Children’s Museum of the East End earlier this month.

“Great, Max, we’d love to hear it,” said a woman seated around the table along with five other children and several adults.

“When my dad died about five and a half years ago,” continued Max, “I felt I would have no one to talk to. But now I have a stepdad in my life and I feel, like, ‘Yes! I have someone I can talk to!’ ”

“Awesome, Max!” said the woman and gave the boy a high-five. “By sharing your thoughts, you’re really helping others.”

The group is Katy’s Kids, a four-year-old peer support group for children, teens, young adults, and their families who are grieving the death of a loved one. It began as an offshoot of the nonprofit organization Katy’s Courage, which was founded in 2012 by James and Brigid Collins Stewart following the death of their 12-year-old daughter, Katy, from a rare form of liver cancer. Katy’s Courage serves as a fund-raising and awareness-building operation, hosting regular local fund-raisers, such as the ever-popular annual Katy’s Courage 5K run to support pediatric cancer research. It also offers annual school scholarships and helps fund this group of Katy’s Kids, which meets twice monthly at CMEE.

  “We knew firsthand that this sort of support group was needed out here,” said Ms. Stewart, who was in the room with Max and the other kids around the table, while her husband mingled with family members in the museum’s common space. “Our son was 6 when Katy died.” 

Ms. Stewart, who is the assistant principal at the Montauk School, credits her co-workers for exposing her to alternative approaches, other than psychotherapy, when it came to dealing with grieving children. The Montauk School faculty sent the family of three, all expenses paid, to the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas, during spring break after Katy’s death. It was there that they learned about healing techniques for children based around play, and the ability to express grief through arts such as painting, drawing, music, poetry, dance, movement, and writing. 

The Stewarts were then introduced to the Dougy Center, the first national center in the United States to provide peer support groups for grieving children and families, which was founded in 1982 in Portland, Ore. After a visit to the facility, the couple knew they needed to bring this model of grief therapy for kids back to the East End.

Until a few decades ago, the accepted belief was that children should be shielded from the concept of death. But at the Dougy Center, and at a growing number of grief centers around the country, the opposite view — that children should be as involved in the grieving process as adults are — is upheld and promoted, reflecting a belief that children cope better when they can recognize loss as a universal experience and are allowed to mourn in the company of relatives and peers.

And so, in the fall of 2015, with the generous support of the Andrew Sabin Foundation, and Steve Long, the president of CMEE, Katy’s Kids opened its doors, offering children a place to discuss death without feeling self-conscious or worrying about making friends feel uncomfortable. It was not designed to be a therapy session. There would be lots of playtime for the kids, who today range from ages 7 to 13, open discussions with trained volunteers and mental health professionals, pizza time for the children, and a full buffet dinner for family members.

“I saw an ad for Katy’s Kids in The East Hampton Star,” said Danielle Bellanoue, whose husband died in the summer of 2013. The family, which included Maxim, who was 6 at the time, and Pai, then 2, lived on a tiny resort island off the coast of Honduras, where her husband, and the children’s father, owned a scuba diving operation. After her husband’s death, Ms. Bellanoue moved with her children to East Hampton, where her parents had retired.

“It came at a really good time. Each of us was processing grief in a unique and different way,” she said. “We simply don’t have an emotional language for grief and for us to suddenly discover this community of similar people dealing with similar problems was so important.” Ms. Bellanoue, who went back to college for a nursing degree and recently started working at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, said that she and her children have rarely missed a session. “Part of our lives will always be reckoning with loss, so to have somewhere to go where the kids can have a bit of fun, and they fed us. . . ,” said Ms. Bellanoue, trailing off before adding, “Hope is offered here by sharing and that’s so positive. This is truly a gift.”

Sharon Burns is the group’s volunteer facilitator, helping to spearhead the tone and flow of the sessions. Ms. Burns, who has a background as an art therapist and counselor, was sent to the Dougy Center, like all volunteers at Katy’s Kids, to be trained in the center’s unique model for peer support.

Carl Brandl is another volunteer who has been involved from the beginning. Mr. Brandl, who is the director of student support services at the Ross School, was a counselor at Pierson Middle School in Sag Harbor, which Katy Stewart attended when she died.

“A death of a child can really finish someone off,” he said last week. “I have a tremendous respect for what [the Stewarts] are doing.”

The collective goal of the organization is to advocate Katy’s Kids so that more grieving families become aware of how it works and to take advantage of its services if needed. 

“Ultimately, we’d love to have our own place,” said Mr. Stewart, East Hampton High School’s health teacher and a longtime coach. “But for now we are so grateful to CMEE to have this space where kids and adults can come and feel safe.”

Wednesday’s session closed with circle time in a playroom colorfully decorated like a scene from a children’s fairy tale. Each child was asked to name his or her best quality.

“I’m an optimist,” said Robert, the Stewart’s son, who is now 13 and, according to his mother, has taken on a leadership role in the group.

“I’m energetic,” said Max.

“You’re all pretty awesome,” said Ms. Burns.

The Bridgehampton School District closed bidding on its school renovation and expansion project on Tuesday with no unwelcome surprises. It was the third round of bidding after the first two rounds, in summer, came back 25 percent higher than expected and the district went back to voters for an additional $4.74 million in September. The school board expects to award contracts next week, the first step toward breaking ground on the $29.4 million project as soon as late November.

The bids were immediately opened on Tuesday for all four aspects of the project — general contractor, electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning. They came in within budget, allowing the district’s architect, John A. Grillo, and its construction management company, School Construction Consultants, to move on to making the recommendations they will deliver to the school board.

“I believe we had a total of 20-plus bids, and it looks like we’ve identified the four contractors,” Robert Hauser, the district’s superintendent, said Tuesday night. “If we vote to approve at that Oct. 17 meeting, we would expect the contractor to at least start mobilizing to start doing the work within 30 days — so, before Thanksgiving.” 

Mr. Hauser said numerous details, such as the order in which the various contractors will do their work, have to be worked out. Adjusting to the disruptions the work will create between now and the summer of 2020, when the district is hoping the project will be finished, will also be necessary.

“There’s going to be some inconveniences, and it’s going to be logistically challenging for the staff, for the students, for anybody who has got to access the back grounds at the school,” Mr. Hauser said. “I’m even concerned about our neighbors, because of the dust and the noise. We’re going to have to open up a dialogue with them.”

When the project is complete, the school will have geothermal heating and 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 out of 40-year-old modular classrooms on the west side of the school into the main building. 

At last month’s school board meeting, Ron White and Douglas DeGroot, members of the board, said they would like to examine expanding programs and even hiring more teachers once the badly needed added space is available.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

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.”

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.