Fun and Healthy at the Y.M.C.A.

The Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter is hosting a healthy kids day on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Kids can climb the rock wall, do science, technology, engineering, and math activities, as well as sports and arts and crafts. There will be a bounce castle and family swim time, among other activities, all offered at no charge. 

A Ballet Weekend at Guild Hall

The students of the Hampton Ballet Theatre School will perform their spring production, “Coppelia,” a comedic ballet, tomorrow at 7 p.m., Saturday at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater.

The show’s score is by Leo Delibes, choreography is by Sara Jo Strickland, the school’s director, costumes are designed and hand-sewn by Yuka Silvera, and lighting is by Sebastian Paczynski. Joining the students will be Gail Baranello of A&G Dance Company and Nick Peregrino. Devon Friedman and Vincenzo James Harty, both advanced professional students, will dance the lead roles.

Advance tickets start at $15 and can be purchased at hamptonballettheatreschool.com.

Puppetry in Amagansett

Liz Joyce’s A Couple of Puppets will present “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Amagansett Library. The show is perfect for kids 2 to 6, who must be accompanied by an adult. Admission is free, but advance registration is requested. 

Eggs Overboard at CMEE

The Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton will host its sixth annual egg drop challenge Saturday from 9:45 to 11:45 a.m. for families with kids of all ages. A design workshop will kick off the activities, with kids creating protective containers for their eggs. Then, from atop the resident pirate ship, they will send their eggs overboard in a 10-foot drop. Which will survive? 

There is a $5 fee for members and a $20 fee for all others. Admission to the museum is included.

At the Libraries 

High schoolers can earn one hour of community service with the East Hampton Library’s new graphic novel review club, in which participants will have one month to read a graphic novel and submit a review. The club’s first meeting is on Tuesday at 4 p.m.

On Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m., the library will host a bilingual celebration of books and reading for children ages 4 to 6. El Dia de los Ninos/El Dia de los Libros is an annual event at the library. A craft-making activity and refreshments will be included. 

Next Thursday from 4 to 5 p.m., sixth through eighth graders can decorate a glass bottle with various colors of yarn. 

At the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton on Tuesday, kids in sixth grade and up can take their instruments, voices, and music for a karaoke showdown and jam session from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

As part of STEAM Sundays at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor, kids ages 8 to 11 can learn how to make a balloon hovercraft on Saturday from 3 to 4 p.m.

On Sunday afternoon at 2, the Montauk Library will screen “Ferdinand,” a movie about a bull with a big heart who is mistaken for a dangerous beast. The movie is suitable for kids of all ages.

For many high school seniors, early spring can be a nail-biter of a season as college notifications trickle in bearing news of acceptances and rejections or the purgatory of being waitlisted. 

For one East Hampton High School senior, however, responses from his desired universities came like so: Yale, yes. Brown, yes. Cornell, yes. University of Pennsylvania, yes. Columbia, yes. Dartmouth, yes. Princeton . . . not yet.

“I was really demoralized after being waitlisted by Princeton,” said Alexander Sigua Pintado, known as Nick, who is East Hampton’s valedictorian this year. “I thought there was no way I was getting into Harvard because it has a lower acceptance rate than Princeton.”

He was wrong. Harvard said yes, yes, yes.

Nick got into seven of the eight Ivy League schools, just one shy of the so-called Ivy League Sweep.

Whether it is seven or eight is hardly relevant. We are officially in an era where getting into even one of those hallowed institutions, whose acceptance rates range from 4 to 12 percent, is considered a superhuman feat. Applicants are expected to submit not only near-perfect scores on their SAT or ACT college application tests, but also to show grade point averages that usually exceed the coveted 4.0, made possible by taking staggering numbers of advanced level courses in high school. They also have to craft a standout essay, clock roughly 100 hours of community service, and be either an athlete, accomplished musician, artist, or debate champ. In addition, they are required to somehow demonstrate characteristics such as curiosity, empathy, openness to change, and ability to overcome adversity — factors that college admissions officials call “predictors of success.”

Marilyn Marsilio, Nick’s high school counselor, who has worked in the East Hampton School District for 25 years, said she does not remember ever seeing one student receive seven Ivy League acceptances in one year. 

“I burst out crying when I found out about Harvard,” said Nick. “I was so surprised especially considering the acceptance rate this year for regular decisions applicants was 2.43 percent.” He added that the overall rate for both early and regular applications was 4.59 percent. In selecting its freshman class of about 2,000, Harvard rejected approximately 35,000 applicants this year.

He texted his good news to a friend and when he walked into his classroom the next morning, everyone started clapping. “It felt really good to have this community backing me,” he said.

Harvard even offered the 17-year-old “the best financial package of all the schools, which will really help lessen the financial burden on my family,” he said. Nick’s mother works in the cafeteria of the Ross School in East Hampton and his father is a carpenter and landscaper. Both are from Ecuador and moved to Springs 20 years ago. Neither went to college.

What narrows the acceptance odds even further at these world-famous institutions is that they admit legacy candidates, that is children of alumni and those of big donors, at a much greater rate than nonlegacy students. Legacies make up nearly a third of Harvard’s current freshman class, The Harvard Crimson reported, while Princeton’s class of 2021 is 13 percent legacy, according to the university’s website.

In addition to the eight Ivies, Nick also applied to Georgetown University, New York University, Northeastern, and to the State University at Binghamton. They all accepted him.

“I can see myself fitting in each of these schools,” he said, but admitted that he is leaning toward Harvard. “It’s been my childhood dream to go there.” 

He has until May 1 to decide and the factors he will consider are the campus environment, the student body, and the interaction between students and professors. He knows the academics will be top-notch. To help with the decision making, he plans to attend Harvard’s upcoming admitted students day as well as travel to New Haven, Conn., for Yale’s Bulldog Saturday to get a second look. 

According to Ms. Marsilio, his acceptances will be motivational for future students. “It’s a great message to kids and parents,” she said, “that you can get to these colleges from a public school.”

Michael Brown, a Houston teenager from an economically challenged public school, made recent headlines by not only getting into all 20 elite universities he applied to, including the eight Ivies, but also receiving a full scholarship to them all.

Of the handful of students who achieved the Ivy League Sweep over the last few years, the majority have something in common with Nick: They are all children of immigrants. That fact is something Nick said he will address in his valedictorian speech. “My speech will have something to do with the American dream.”

The second in an East Hampton Star series on school budgets for 2018-19 focuses on the Amagansett School District, which has classes from prekindergarten through sixth grade.

The Amagansett budget, adopted by the school board last week, is about $10.7 million and reflects a $73,421 increase over this year’s. Of that, $72,000 is earmarked for anticipated security measures and improvements at the school, according to Eleanor Tritt, the district superintendent, who will retire as of June 30.

“We worked hard to hold the line and maintain all our services and programs for the kids without any increases,” she said in her office on Friday, adding that the school will maintain the tax levy below the cap. “The only real increase for something new in our budget is the $72,000 for security,” she said.

The specifics of those measures are not known yet, she continued. “We are reviewing what we want and might need. We are meeting with technology experts, other superintendents and districts, security companies, looking at upgrades to our existing system and installing new technology.” 

Ms. Tritt stressed that security is “pretty good” right now, but she felt that it was incumbent upon the school to explore ways to improve it and have the money ready to do so. “To ensure the safety of our children is our number-one concern,” she said.

One of the biggest decreases in the budget is about $250,000 less allocated for tuition students, that is, for students who graduate from Amagansett and attend East Hampton or other schools, as well as children with special education needs. Every year those numbers change, Ms. Tritt said, and this year they were able to budget for fewer children. Those savings, however, are almost entirely negated by a $240,000 increase in employee health benefits and insurance, a sharp rise that many school districts are having to absorb. The exact insurance rates will not be finalized until January of next year.

Staffing changes, with employees retiring and leaving, also allowed the school to allocate just under $31,000 less toward administrative salaries next year. No jobs were cut, Ms. Tritt emphasized.

Although the projected enrollment for next year is 90, which is four fewer students than this year, she pointed out that those numbers often change during the late summer, when families make a final decision about relocating and whether to join the school district.

Some noteworthy additions to curricular programs include “more creativity” in the arts offerings, Ms. Tritt said. Students will also see the return of Shakespeare to the curriculum, something that has been absent for the last few years. The study of a Shakespearean play will culminate in a schoolwide production. A hydroponic garden will also be instituted, enabling children to learn how to grow herbs and vegetables, which will be donated to the St. Michael’s senior citizens housing complex in the hamlet.

When district voters head to the polls on May 15, they will be asked to consider two additional items. The first involves dipping into a 2007 technology reserve fund for approximately $100,000 to cover the cost for upgrades of smartboards, laptops, and the phone system. Some of that money will also go toward updating the technology of the school’s security system. The other item requiring voter approval is the use of approximately $100,000 from a 2015 capital reserve fund for the purchase of a new school bus.

“I hope people will look at the budget and see that we keep providing all the services even as times change,” said Ms. Tritt, “and that we have been very responsible. The proof is in the pudding, as our kids do very well in the world after a strong foundation here.”

As for finding a new superintendent to take the helm before the beginning of the next school year, the search is underway. On Tuesday, a consultant spent the day at the school, from 8:15 a.m. to 8 p.m., conducting a focus group with parents, community members, teachers, administrators, and members of the police and fire departments. 

The superintendent has urged parents and residents to contact her should they need a detailed explanation of the budget. “It can be very confusing, and I’m always here to sit down with anyone and go over it,” she said.

The Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in East Hampton will hold an open house on Monday at 6 p.m. to discuss its prekindergarten programs for 3 and 4-year-olds and its toddler programs. 

The center offers a full-day pre-K program, available to children who will turn 4 by Dec. 1. Registration and tours for prospective families will be offered by appointment from Tuesday through Friday, April 20, between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Meanwhile, the East Hampton School District, which has sent its pre-K students to the Whitmore Center for many years, is gearing up to register prekindergartners for its own full-day program at the John M. Marshall Elementary School. Registration for that program will begin May 14 and run through May 25. 

Only children who turn 4 by Dec. 1 and who are East Hampton School District residents will be eligible.To schedule an appointment, parents have been asked to call the John M. Marshall Elementary School or visit the district office on Long Lane, before Friday, April 20.

Registration will be exclusively by appointment and available during weekdays only.

Administrators at the Ross School announced on Friday that the school will move its pre-nursery-through-sixth-grade program to its East Hampton campus on Goodfriend Drive for the 2018-19 school year, closing its lower school campus in Bridgehampton. 

“We are about to embark on the next exciting phase of our history as we fully embrace the original intent of our visionary founder Courtney Ross to be ‘one school,’ ” said an email to parents on Friday from Andi O’Hearn, Ross’s chief of student advancement, Bill O’Hearn, the head of high school, and Jeanette Tyndall, head of the lower and middle school.

Ross took over the Butter Lane, Bridgehampton, campus — once home to the Hampton Day School and later to the Morriss Center School — at the start of the 2006-7 school year after the smaller Morriss Center merged with Ross. The merger allowed Ross to expand down, adding kindergarten through third grade. Prekindergarten and early childhood programs followed. 

In 2008, the school began enrolling boarding students; by 2013, they made up 40 percent of the student population. 

In the letter to parents, the administrators outlined the benefits of the move, saying it will allow younger students to interact with the school’s international boarding students without the transportation costs now involved, make for smoother drop-offs and pickups for parents with students in the upper and lower grades, and “allow us to leverage our resources and better plan for the long-term sustainability of Ross School.”

What will become of the Bridgehampton campus is unclear, and administrators had not returned calls as of press time.

The school was founded in 1991 for a single class of just three fifth-graders, including Ms. Ross’s daughter, Nicole. Each year it added a new grade to accommodate its initial students. It became coed in 1997. According to the school’s website, Ross now has 420 students, including boarding students from 20 countries. 

The transition to a single campus will take place over the summer. Next year, Ross’s pre-nursery, nursery, and prekindergarten will be housed in the lower level of the Ross Tennis Center. Students in kindergarten through sixth grade will have classes in the same building as the middle school students. 

Ms. Tyndall will offer lower school parents tours of the upper school campus and the middle school building tomorrow at 9 and 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and will meet with and answer questions from eighth-grade and high school parents that day at 4 p.m. along with Mr. O’Hearn.

Amy Van Scoyoc, the daughter of Peter Van Scoyoc, the East Hampton Town supervisor, and Marilyn Van Scoyoc, a retired band director at East Hampton High School, was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to further her research into the effects of land use and development on Lyme disease. 

She will receive three years of financial support with a $34,000 annual stipend and a yearly $12,000 cost-of-education allowance that will be awarded to the University of California, Berkeley, where she is a Ph.D. student at the Brashares Laboratory of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. 

According to the National Science Foundation’s website, the financial award is granted “for graduate study that leads to a research-based master’s or doctoral degree in a STEM field.”

Ms. Van Scoyoc graduated from East Hampton High School in 2009 as the class valedictorian and attended Dartmouth College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in ecology. She then worked in the environmental nonprofit sector for about five years before returning to academia last year, joining the five-to-six-year doctoral program at Berkeley.

“I guess my family has always had close ties to our community, and my research interests have developed out of the issues our town grapples with and the interconnectedness of human and ecological systems,” she said of the research the fellowship grant will allow her to conduct over the next three years.

“I am proposing to quantify tick success and Lyme prevalence by looking at fine-scale host animal movement and interaction with fences, buildings, and other infrastructure,” she wrote in an email to The Star. “Basically, areas with infrastructure that concentrates host movement could be increasing local tick success, increasing Lyme prevalence; conversely, infrastructure could be lowering tick density due to increased animal transport of ticks out of constricted areas and depositing them into resting regions.”

Deepening this knowledge of how infrastructure influences the movement of animals that are tick hosts and the subsequent spread of disease will help scientists anticipate the effects of changing land use on Lyme disease dynamics and, in turn, how that affects people, she said.

Ms. Van Scoyoc was one of 2,000 awardees of this year’s fellowship, selected from more than 12,000 applicants from across the United States and its territories.

East Hampton

E.H.H.S.

East Hampton High School’s annual job fair will be held next Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The middle school’s sixth-grade dance, with sixth graders from Amagansett, is scheduled for Friday, April 20, from 7 to 9 p.m.

There will be a school board meeting on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

Sag Harbor

Pierson

The work of seven young artists enrolled in Pierson High School’s International Baccalaureate program will be showcased today in an exhibition in the Pierson lobby from 6 to 7 p.m.

On Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. the Sag Harbor School Board will meet in the Pierson library. 

The Notebook

Amagansett School

An Amagansett School Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

Hayground

Bruce Wolosoff, an acclaimed composer and pianist, will commence his music residency at the Hayground School on April 27. Mr. Wolosoff, whose has been called “an authentic American voice,” has been composing music in response to visual art. During his music residency at Hayground he plans to work with paintings by a local artists, including Eric Fischl, April Gornik, and Margaret Garrett, all of whom have agreed to attend working rehearsals with the students.

Hayground’s artists-in-residence program invites professional artists, writers, and musicians to share their craft in immersive workshops that challenge the students to think, create, and perform as working artists.

Ross School

All parent-teacher conferences will be held tomorrow between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Child care will be available in the Field House on the lower campus in Bridgehampton. Upper school conferences will be held in the Center for Well-Being on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton.

Springs

Springs sixth graders in Katherine Farmer’s and Raymond Wojtusiak’s social studies classes celebrated the completion of their unit on Greece by holding a Greek celebration. Students immersed themselves in Greek culture by using Greek terms, dressing in traditional attire, and learning how to dance the Zorba. In addition, students tasted traditional foods such as Greek salad, grapes, pita bread with tzatziki sauce, and Greek yogurt with honey and cinnamon.

Dylan Scalia, a fourth grader, was a finalist in the Create a Character contest, organized by StoryWorks magazine and judged by Nora Raleigh Baskin, an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Dylan was one of 75 finalists selected out of 2,000 entrants.

The PTA-sponsored spring book fair will be held Monday through next Thursday. Throughout the week, students will visit the book fair with their classes. Parents and caregivers can attend during a family night next Thursday from 6:30 to 8.

Stages Actors Stage “13”

Stages, a Children’s Theatre Workshop, will present three performances of “13,” a musical about being 13, at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor this weekend. 

The musical premiered on Broadway in 2008 and was the first Broadway show performed by an all-teenage cast. Stages’ production, directed by Helene Leonard, features 22 young actors in a high-energy, coming-of-age musical for anyone who is 13, has been 13, or will be 13.

Performances will be on Saturday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door.

STEAM, Tween, and Teen 

Children ages 5 to 8 can participate in a STEAM-based project on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Amagansett Library. Using science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics, kids will learn how to create a wall hanging with paint on fabric, and using vegetables and fruits as stamps. 

The tween book club for third through sixth graders will meet on Tuesday from 4 to 4:45 p.m. to read their first book, “Wish Tree,” by Katherine Applegate. Each month a new book will be selected.

The teen advisory group’s monthly brainstorming session will be held on Friday, April 20, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Pizza will be served.

Spring Planting at CMEE

Families with kids of all ages can join educators from the Children’s Museum of the East End and representatives from Amber Waves Farm between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday to plant seeds that will later be transplanted in the museum’s outdoor classroom and garden. There’s a mural growing in the museum’s lobby and families with kids have been invited to stop by on Saturday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to use mixed materials and create beautiful paper flowers that will be added to the mural. Both programs are free with museum admission.

Workshops and Crafts in East Hampton

Kids ages 5 and up will learn how to make colorful play dough at home on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at the East Hampton Library.

On Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m., children ages 4 and up can take part in a hands-on class to create a sculpture made entirely from fabric. 

Sixth through eighth graders can stop by next Thursday at 4 p.m. to transform an ordinary pen into a blossoming flower.

Advance registration is requested for all programs. 

Dog Tales, Trivia, and Monet 

Wally, a dog who loves listening to kids read, will be back at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor on Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon. The session is intended for kids ages 4 and older.

High school trivia night is Saturday at 6. Teens can compete in teams of three to five players. The winning team will receive prizes and everyone gets free pizza. 

On Sunday, children ages 5 to 9 will create garden-inspired paintings from 2 to 3 p.m. using the famous “Garden at Giverny” by Claude Monet as a template. All events are free but advance registration is required.

Books and Poetry in Bridgehampton

A special story time on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton will wrap up national library week and kick off the library’s 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program. Poetry month will be celebrated next Thursday from 4 to 5 p.m. for kids ages 7 to 12. On Friday, April 20, children 4 and older can make butterfly feeders in a workshop at 4 p.m. 

Shark Tauk

Kids ages 8 and up can join Greg Metzger Saturday from 2 to 3:15 p.m. at the Montauk Library for an interactive program about the white shark research he conducts along the South Shore of Long Island. Children will learn basic shark biology, as well as have an opportunity to fill out research data sheets, and experience what it feels like to reel in a shark. Registration is required as the program is limited to 15 children. 

Seahorse, Amphibians, and Birds at SoFo

On Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton, children ages 3 to 5 can stop by for a reading of Eric Carle’s “Mister Seahorse.” After the story, children will make a colorful craft and get to feed the museum’s seahorses. There is a $3 materials fee per child.

Families with children of all ages will be introduced to some of SoFo’s native amphibians, such as the endangered eastern tiger salamander, the gray tree frog, the red-spotted newt, and Fowler’s toad, on Saturday between 1 and 2 p.m. 

On Sunday at 10:30 a.m., kids ages 8 and up will learn about birds including the special features that allow them to fly and survive. Participants will receive a fill-in booklet to take home with all information covered during the program. There will be a materials fee of $3 per child.

Advance registration with the museum is required for all programs, as space is limited.

Administrators at the Ross School announced on Friday that the school will move its pre-nursery-through-sixth-grade program to its East Hampton campus on Goodfriend Drive for the 2018-19 school year, closing its lower school campus in Bridgehampton.

Ross took over the Butter Lane, Bridgehampton, campus — once home to the Hampton Day School and later to the Morriss Center School — at the start of the 2006-7 school year after the smaller Morriss Center merged with Ross. The merger allowed Ross to expand down, adding kindergarten through third grade. Prekindergarten and early childhood programs were added later. In 2008, the school began enrolling boarding students; by 2013, they made up 40 percent of the student population.

The school was founded in 1991 by Courtney Ross for a single class of just three fifth graders, including Ms. Ross's daughter, Nicole. Each year it added a new grade to accommodate its initial students. It became coed in 1997. According to the school's website, Ross now has 420 students, including boarding students from 20 countries.

"We are about to embark on the next exciting phase of our history as we fully embrace the original intent of our visionary founder Courtney Ross to be 'one school,' " Andi O'Hearn, Ross's chief of student advancement, Bill O'Hearn, the head of high school, and Jeanette Tyndall, head of the lower and middle school, wrote in an email to parents on Friday.

The administrators outlined the benefits of the move, saying it will allow younger students to interact with the school's international boarding students without the transportation costs now involved, make for smoother drop-offs and pickups for parents with students in the upper and lower grades, and "allow us to leverage our resources and better plan for the long-term sustainability of Ross School."

The transition will take place over the summer. Next year, Ross's pre-nursery, nursery, and prekindergarten will be housed in the lower level of the Ross Tennis Center. Students in kindergarten through sixth grade will have classes in the same building as the middle school students.

Ms. Tyndall will offer lower school parents tours of the upper school campus and the middle school building on Friday at 9 and 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and will meet with and answer questions from eighth-grade and high school parents that day at 4 p.m. along with Mr. O'Hearn.

Administrators could not be reached for comment.

In less than six weeks, on May 15, voters in school districts across the state will head to the polls to cast their ballots on next year’s budgets and board member elections. Each week leading up to the vote, The Star will focus on the budgets proposed by each school district in our coverage area, in an effort to highlight the changes and projections that are often unique to each. 

In Bridgehampton, Robert Hauser, the school’s superintendent, appointed only a month ago, presented next year’s proposed school budget to the community on Wednesday.

Mr. Hauser, formerly the district’s assistant superintendent of finance and facilities, took over at the helm following the retirement of Lois Favre, the superintendent of the last seven years. Melisa Stiles, the former district treasurer stepped into the role of the business administrator, or the fiscal officer, for the district.

The district’s proposed budget for the 2018-19 school year is just under $16.3 million, an increase of $1.9 million, or 13.5 percent over this year’s budget. The proposed budget stays below the state-sanctioned 2-percent cap on tax levy increases, meaning revenues raised through property taxes will increase by less than 2 percent. Mr. Hauser said he anticipates the budget to be adopted at the Bridgehampton School Board’s April 18 meeting.

The largest increase — $988,965 — represents the first payment on the $24.7 million bond approved by voters in 2016 to finance the school expansion and renovation. The bond will be paid off over 20 years. Construction is expected to begin on July 1.

New staff positions proposed for general education programs account for approximately $200,000 of next year’s increase. The special education department will receive an additional $450,490 toward new staff as well as out-of-district tuition and transportation costs. 

Following East Hampton’s push to offer students greater vocational education options, Bridgehampton will also revamp its career and technical education department “as part of our career and college ready initiative,” said Mr. Hauser. Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz, the school’s longtime environmental design and technology teacher, will be reappointed to oversee that initiative, and the cost of a replacement technology teacher has been factored into the budget.

The vocational offerings in Bridgehampton seem to focus on giving students an insight into the farming and horticulture sector with new courses such as agriculture foundations, agriculture technology, and agriculture business and finance being added to next year’s choices. There will also be nutritional and culinary arts classes added, as well an introduction to environmental science, and a virtual enterprise course in horticulture.

“These are all work-based learning courses,” said the superintendent, “to offer kids the opportunity to work while still at school.”

Another noteworthy development  will be at the school’s elementary level, where the hiring of a guidance counselor who specializes in the emotional well-being of elementary-age children is included in the budget. Mr. Hauser stressed that this is a nonmandated — though state-recommended — position, intended to better serve the psychological needs of the youngest students. Currently, there is a school-wide psychologist and a guidance counselor.

Also in the elementary program, Mr. Hauser said the district would like to continue Dr. Favre’s legacy of implementing a specialized co-teacher in a classroom containing special education students, which reduces the need to pull out those students for separate instruction, and allows them instead to be in an inclusive setting.

The school also projects an increase in enrollment of approximately 10 students. Prekindergarten numbers are expected to increase by five, although that could be higher, said Mr. Hauser, as the school is looking to separate the 3 and 4-year-olds, which would allow for more students in each classroom.

High school enrollment is also expected to increase by five students. The scheduled closure of the Bishop McGann-Mercy Diocesan High School in Riverhead will possibly send some its  students to Bridgehampton, said Mr. Hauser, since the nearest options for Catholic schools are in West Islip and Melville. The superintendent said that many McGann-Mercy families have requested tours of his school as they search for nearby alternatives.

“Out-of-district tuition is $16,000 per year at Bridgehampton,” he said, adding that McGann-Mercy was probably at least double that, which makes Bridgehampton an appealing option.

Mr. Hauser and Ms. Stiles are confident that the budget will be approved by voters in May. 

Last year, Long Island saw a history-making approval of budgets in all of 124 public school districts. It was the first time the region produced a 100-percent passage rate since one-day balloting began in 1996, and was largely credited to the introduction in 2012-13 of the 2-percent property tax cap. Those limitations, in effect, make school systems more reliant upon state aid and require that legislators put together timely aid packages that help districts with their budget planning.

With that in mind, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and state legislators announced Saturday that Long Island’s public schools will get an extra $100 million in state operating aid for the 2018-19 academic year. Although financial experts say this number does not reflect the rate of annual growth and spending for schools in the last few years, it is nonetheless enough to help districts curb taxes or add such services as security enforcement and psychological counseling.

The Bridgehampton School District received the second largest boost in state aid among South Fork schools, with an additional $47,704 earmarked for next year, which is a 6.5-percent increase over this year. Sag Harbor benefited the most with a 10.3-percent increase.

Changes in aid allocations, though governed by state formulas, vary widely from one district to another, depending upon such factors as local spending decisions. The Sagaponack and Wainscott districts are not included in this package as they are systems with fewer than eight teachers and receive state aid through a different funding stream.