The East Hampton School District unveiled preliminary estimates at a school board meeting Tuesday for how much it would cost to build a bus barn on its high school campus. Costs were initially estimated at $4.75 million, but Mike Guido, the district’s architect, brought that estimate down to about $4.5 million after evaluating specifics. 

The district, which now leases space for bus maintenance and repair, has been discussing having its own facility for some time in order to save money.

The district has not yet made a final decision about where the barn, or transportation depot in school board lingo, would be located, but it appears to have narrowed down the options: The barn would either be in front of the school or in back of it, behind the track.

Later in the meeting, the board accepted the resignation of Dennis Sullivan, the assistant principal at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, without explanation. Mr. Sullivan is expected to complete the school year. Richard Burns, the superintendent, said he could not discuss the  resignation due to concerns about privacy.

The school board also voted to accept the retirements of 14 longtime employees. They are Claude Beudert, a special education teacher, David Douglas, a music teacher, Lisa Benincasa, a science teacher, Lynn Gilliam, a sixth-grade teacher, Patricia Hand, the athletic director’s assistant, Nikki Jackson, a business teacher, Bruce Lieberman, an art teacher, JoAnn Morgan, the middle school principal’s secretary, Deborah McIntyre, a para-professional, Dianne Picken, a science teacher, Laura Pluta, a math teacher, Candace Stafford, a guidance counselor, Marilyn Van Scoyoc, a music teacher, and Susan Vaughan, an academic intervention teacher.

 Mr. Burns said the district would have a celebration of these employees’ accomplishments at a later date.

To remain under New York State’s tax levy cap, the Amagansett School District would be limited to a .16-percent tax levy increase, or $14,000, in the 2016-17 school year, Eleanor Tritt, the district superintendent, told the school board as its preliminary budget was unveiled on Feb. 23. 

In order to keep expenses to a minimum, Ms. Tritt told the board, there will be no transfer to the district’s capital projects fund, a first. Subsequent to the meeting, the preliminary budget was adjusted to eliminate $50,000 proposed toward the purchase of a bus. 

“We’ve worked very hard to reduce expenditures as much as possible, to keep the levy as low as possible,” Ms. Tritt said at the meeting. “If you do that, you get to a point where you can’t keep reducing without having a strong impact on programs.” 

As of Tuesday, the deadline for the district to announce its intentions as to whether to pierce the cap, “we are over the tax levy cap,” Mr. Tritt said. The preliminary budget, she had told the board, would have the tax levy increasing by 3.47 percent, “even though expenditures only increase by .27 percent, because we don’t have fund balance left over.” 

Tuition costs for Amagansett students attending East Hampton High School are expected to total a higher-than-anticipated $2.6 million, Ms. Tritt said. Teachers’ salaries will total $4.4 million, health insurance an estimated $930,000, and retirement systems around $665,000. The proposed tuition rate for a regular education student is $24,539; for special needs students, $68,125. The current charter school tuition rate is $59,000, she said. 

Staff salaries will increase by 1.5 percent per contractual agreement. The budget has also changed to reflect a retirement that is no longer anticipated, Ms. Tritt said on Tuesday. “With staffing changes, people going out on leave, people moving, others coming in, you’re constantly adjusting the budget for changes. Also, you have situations where someone might get married and go from single to family health insurance.” 

“We’ve worked very hard to develop programs for our children to help them be successful,” she said. “Our goal is to maintain those programs.” With minimal state aid, which the superintendent called “a very small fraction of our revenue” — and even that expected to be less than initially indicated — the district can only turn to the tax levy, she said. “We have always given back the fund balance to try to keep the tax levy low. But because the tuition expense is more than originally known, we don’t have the amount of fund balance to give back.” 

The number of tuition students will increase in the coming years, Mr. Tritt said. Nine will graduate this year, while next year 16 will. “The flux of changes is so dramatic,” she said. “Many of our new students actually were not born in Amagansett, but move into the district.” In 2010, for example, “we had 15 new additional tuition students from October to November. It’s the kind of situation we have to accommodate.”

Teen Film Contest

High school filmmakers have been invited to take part in the East Hampton Library’s teen film contest. Details on the contest rules can be learned at a kickoff meeting on Tuesday from 3 to 4 p.m. at the library. 

Alone or in teams, participants will work after hours at the library to create their own films in one of six categories: animation, comedy, documentary, drama, music video, or public service announcement. Winners will be announced at a screening and awards program next month. Advance registration is required with Lisa Michne at 324-0222, extension 2, or by email at lisa@easthamptonlibrary.org. 

Stop-Motion Workshop

Artists from the Good School will be on hand at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill on Sunday to lead families in making their own stop-motion animation movies. The program, which runs from 2 to 4 p.m., will cover set building and design, characters, and plotlines. It is free with museum admission, which is $10 for adults. Space is limited so advance registration online at parrishart.org is required. 

A Marionette Snow Queen

The Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre will bring Eulenspiegel Puppets of Iowa to the Bay Street Theater stage in Sag Harbor on Saturday for a marionette production of “The Snow Queen.” Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the story follows a girl who will stop at nothing to save her friend from the Snow Queen. The show, which begins at 11 a.m., is ideal for children 3 to 8. Tickets cost $15. 

Puppet shows are planned every Saturday this month at Bay Street. This week and next, the theater will present the next installments in its Children’s Film Festival. “Toy Story” will be shown on Sunday at 2 p.m. “Toy Story 2” is coming up on March 13, and on April 3, it’s “Toy Story 3.” Tickets cost $5. 

Young Cowgirls Show

The Young Cowgirls, a girls performance group that has been working at Guild Hall with Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls, will offer short theatrical presentations that they conceived and developed themselves tomorrow at 7 p.m. Participants in the program have spent the past six weeks journaling, sharing, doing improv exercises, and learning about directing and choreographing. 

Seek Student Opioid P.S.A.s

LTV has put out a call for East Hampton High School students to produce their own 30 or 60-second public service announcements aimed at combating the problem of heroin and opioid addiction on Long Island. 

“We thought that the best people to speak to the students are their peers,” said Morgan Vaughan, the executive director of LTV. LTV staff will help guide students and lend equipment, if necessary, “but we want the P.S.A.s to ultimately come from them,” Ms. Vaughan said in a release. 

Student producers will earn 20 hours of community service for each submission. The P.S.A.s will be broadcast on LTV and will be posted on its website. Students interested in the project have been asked to contact Ms. Vaughn at 537-2777, extension 112, or morgan@ltveh.org.

Quesadilla Kids

Young kids who love to cook should enjoy a Saturday morning workshop at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton. In it, kids 3 to 6 will make quesadillas with help from their parents. The cost is $19 including museum admission, or $7 for members. 

Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, and Elizabeth Reveiz, the director of East Hampton’s English as a new language program, on Tuesday proposed budgets for their respective programs that they described as fiscally responsible. The school board seemed to agree.

During a budget work session, Mr. Fine pitched a curriculum budget, not including teachers’ salaries, that would increase by about $8,000, or 2.1 percent, over last year’s figure of $388,521. The curriculum budget includes such items as textbooks, workbooks, science lab materials, art supplies, fees for the grading of Regents exams, and conferences for teachers and administrators.

“I believe the budget is completely fair and appropriate,” the principal said in an email yesterday. “Teachers have budgeted for what they need to run the current high school program. I believe it completely maintains our challenging academic program. Of course, I would love to add staff and create more new programs, but at this time it is not appropriate.”

The salaries of teachers and other staff members are included separately in the administrative budget, which was presented to the board on Feb. 9. Tuesday’s session was the district’s second of the 2016-17 budget process. The school board has not made any final spending decisions yet.

The proposed high school budget would increase spending in science, social studies, and math, but decrease spending in English and foreign languages and on guidance department materials. Funding would remain the same for the business, drama, art, family and consumer sciences, music, and technology departments. The high school would keep consistent its contribution of $5,000 to the South Fork Behavioral Health Initiative, which is a joint effort with the state, county, Family Service League, and other school districts to improve students’ mental health.

Among the big-ticket items in the high school budget is a proposed $16,500 for 150 new TI-84 Plus graphing calculators, which are state-mandated for students taking Regents exams in algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. Patty Conigliaro, the school’s math coordinator, said the existing calculators are about 10 years old and on the verge of being inadequate.

“The calculators we have right now are really ancient with the graphing technology we are supposed to be supplying,” Ms. Conigliaro said. With 150 new ones, “at least we can start the process of replacing everything we have.”

Ms. Reveiz ran her programs in bilingual education last year on a budget of $39,187, and this year has proposed cutting about $2,000 from that total, a decrease of about 5.3 percent. The budget includes expenses such as bilingual library materials, computer programs, resource workbooks, magazine subscriptions, and conference and training opportunities for teachers.

“Every little bit helps,” Ms. Reveiz said. “If we can put it toward something more meaningful, then why not? We’re about streamlining.”

“We appreciate it,” said Richard Burns, the district superintendent .

Yesterday, J.P. Foster, the school board president, said that while budgeting is still in the early stages, the board left with a good feeling about the proposals from Mr. Fine and Ms. Reveiz.

“So far, so good,” Mr. Foster said. “I think it’s responsible, is probably the best way to put it. We still have 8 or 10 meetings to go . . . but from the teachers on up to the superintendent, everyone has worked really hard, knowing we are in a really tight situation.”

A series of workshops for parents, educators, and community members about the challenges faced by students today will begin Tuesday at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

Sponsored by the East End Special Education Parent Teacher Organization, or SEPTO, the series is dubbed Parent University. It will introduce a new topic each Tuesday through April 5 in one-hour sessions that will feature expert presenters.

According to a news release, those who want to learn more about “managing the challenges facing children in and out of the school setting” may sign up for individual sessions or the entire six-week series. Topics of discussion will include “Making Sense of the Common Core: A Parent’s Guide to Math Instruction” on March 8, “Effects of Trauma and Building Resiliency” on March 15, “Recognizing and Responding to Self-Injury Behaviors in Today’s Youth” on March 22, and “Dangers of Social Networking: How to Identify and Respond” on April 5.

Doors open at 6:15 p.m. and each workshop will begin at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. A raffle will be held, with a drawing to take place on April 5. Proceeds will go toward future SEPTO events. More information and registration materials may be found at eastendsepto.com.

Eight teenagers from around the South Fork will be the presenters tomorrow at the Parrish Art Museum’s first Teen PechaKucha Night Hamptons.

PechaKucha Night, which originated in Tokyo as a way for young people to connect and talk about inspiring new ideas, has participants present 20 slides and discuss them in rapid-fire succession for 20 seconds each. According to the website pechakucha.org, more than 800 cities worldwide have held PechaKucha events since its inception in 2003.

The presenters tomorrow will be Karen Blandon and Lily McGintee from East Hampton High School, Tycho Burwell from the East Hampton Middle School, Claire Kunzeman and Leyla Dorph Lowrie from Pierson High School, Hudson Galardi Troy from Pierson Middle School, Chandler Littlejohn from the Ross School, and Indivi Bacon from Southampton High School.

Teen PechaKucha Night Hamptons will begin at 6 p.m. Admission is $10 and includes admission to the museum, although it is free for members, students, and children. 

Free Flicks

The East Hampton Library will screen “Stuart Little” today at 1 p.m. and “Sleeping Beauty” today at 4:30. Next Thursday, at 4:30 p.m., the movie will be “Milo and Otis.”

Kids can also catch a film, Disney’s “Inside Out,” at the Montauk Library at 2 p.m. today.

Game Time

The Montauk Library also will have an afternoon of video games for kids, including Wii Sports and Mariokart, on Saturday beginning at 2 p.m. Refreshments will be served. Space is limited, so signing up ahead of time is required.

Reading With Tara

Children who are struggling with reading will  have a chance to practice their skills by reading to Tara, a certified Pet Partners therapy dog, during new weekly sessions, starting today at the East Hampton Library. The sessions, 15 minutes each, are available between 4 and 5 p.m., and advance sign-up is required.

Team Spirit

The Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center’s after-school arts program recently teamed up with the Watermill Center for what was a Young Artist Residency Project. There will be an exhibition of the artwork that resulted at the Sara Nightingale Gallery, titled “Team Spirit,” beginning Tuesday with a reception at 6 p.m. The student work will be on display through Friday, Feb. 26. Visits to the gallery require appointments, which can be made by calling 793-2256.

CMEE Does Zumba

The Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton will have its first-ever Zumba party for kids and their families on Saturday at 10 a.m.

The workout mixes dance and fitness moves, set to a soundtrack chosen for all ages. The class is $2 for members and $14 for nonmembers. Space is limited, so sign-up in advance is recommended.

Make Some Noise

A workshop in making a musical gourd rattle, an ancient art form, is planned at the East Hampton Library tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. Children ages 4 and up will be welcomed, but those under 7 must be accompanied by an adult.

Teen Presentations

Teen PechaKucha Night will bring students from schools across the South Fork to the Parrish Art Museum on Friday, Feb. 26, at 6 p.m.

PechaKucha events are meant to promote the exchange of ideas through slide-shows consisting of 20 images discussed for 20 seconds each by 20 different presenters. Admission is free for museum members, children, and students, but $10 otherwise.

Teen Trivia

Tomorrow night is Trivia Night for teens at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor. Students in grades 9 through 12 will team up in groups of three, and will be challenged to answer round after round of increasingly tough trivia questions.

Pizza will be served and prizes awarded. Trivia night begins at 7.

Weekly Lego

The Montauk Library’s ongoing Lego Builders Club will meet tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. A similar drop-in Lego session is scheduled for Sunday at the Children’s Museum of the East End from 10 a.m. to noon.

Kevin Gersh, who runs several private schools and programs for students with special needs elsewhere on the Island, won overwhelmingly positive support from more than 30 families at a meeting at the Child Development Center of the Hamptons on Feb. 10. It had been called in anticipation of the State University’s Charter School Institute giving him approval to take over the school’s management.

C.D.C.H. would be Mr. Gersh’s first foray into  charter schools, though not his first program that blends general education and special education students in an inclusion setting. He is the founder of the Gersh Academy schools for students with autism and the co-founder of the West Hills Montessori School. News of his potential management takeover came to light about two weeks ago. 

 Mr. Gersh told parents that the  major challenge would be adding enough pupils to keep the school afloat. His goal for next year is attracting 25 new students, he said, while at least 50 more is the ultimate goal. There are now 57 students enrolled, whereas at the school’s peak it had 95.

School officials recently reported C.D.C.H.’s finances had leveled following a troubled year in which it lost at least $350,000. Family Residences and Essential Enterprises, the Old Bethpage not-for-profit that has managed the school for many years, has been handling many of its expenses, and toward the end of 2015 began looking for a new entity to manage the school.

Revenue for the school comes from tuition paid by the public school districts from which its students come, which varies widely based on those districts’ average per-pupil costs. Students in the general education program may come from districts within a 15-mile radius of C.D.C.H., while students in special education may come from within a 50-mile radius.

Parents at the meeting asked Mr. Gersh if he might undertake a summer camp or before and after-school programs for the children of working parents who have trouble finding those services. Others asked him to expand the school through eighth grade. It now serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

“There’s nothing we can’t do. . . . We are an organization that is child-first,” Mr. Gersh said.

Kevin Fleming of Riverhead, who has a son at C.D.C.H., said after the meeting that he was ecstatic that Mr. Gersh may be coming in. Mr. Fleming and his wife, Janice, had looked at the Gersh Academy in West Hempstead for their son, who has special needs, but the private school tuition put it out of reach.

“C.D.C.H. was the closest thing to Gersh Academy that we could find,” Mr. Fleming said. “To find this out was just amazing. Absolutely phenomenal. We know that this is going to be an asset to the community. We’re looking forward to it. C.D.C.H. is doing an amazing job with our son, and to have Kevin Gersh come along is just a win-win.”

Maria Ortiz of East Hampton, whose son recently transferred to C.D.C.H. from the John M. Marshall Elementary School, said she had confidence in Mr. Gersh. “Everything is going to be better for the children,” Ms. Ortiz said.

Fiona Fleming of Sag Harbor, who also has a son at C.D.C.H. and who recently joined its board of directors, said, “Once we get our name out, and with this organization helping us, we’ll have a lot more enrollment.”

The meeting was conducted bilingually for those whose first language is Spanish. Sheila Fridman, the co-founder and executive director of the Gersh International Puerto Rico schools, was the translator.

Mr. Gersh said his inspiration to provide excellent education for children came from his own background as a student with special needs. In a recent interview, he said he has dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, and found school very difficult. In fact, he said, he had attended seven different colleges, but could not graduate.

“Basically, the goal is to customize the learning process around children’s strengths and weaknesses. You support them where they’re weak and push them where they’re strong, instead of teaching children all the same way like the way I was taught,” he said.

“My life is education. That’s what I do, I educate children,” he said. “I saw an amazing opportunity to bring quality service to the East End of Long Island.”

Courtney Sale Ross, the founder of the Ross School, is the inaugural recipient of a Global Citizen Award from the University of California at Los Angeles, the Ross School, which has campuses in East Hampton and Bridgehampton, announced last week.

The university said the new award was intended to recognize those who work toward “transformational change for the children of the world through visionary leadership in education in the global era.”

Mrs. Ross received the award last week at a ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which was formed after the end of World War II to promote peace.

At the event, Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, the Wasserman dean of education and information studies at U.C.L.A., who nominated Mrs. Ross for the award, called her educational philosophy “groundbreaking.”  Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, called the Ross School “an inspiring example of a 21st century education.”

In a statement, Mrs. Ross said she was honored by the award and to have had “the opportunity to help lead the effort to develop solutions to the difficult challenges we face. I look forward to a continued collaboration and cooperation with today’s education leaders. It is the only way we will be able to expedite global consciousness.”

Moody’s Investors Service, which evaluates municipalities, schools, businesses, and other entities on their ability to repay short-term debt, announced last week it had upgraded the Sag Harbor School District’s credit rating.

Moody’s upped Sag Harbor to Aa2 from its previous grade of Aa3. The Aa2 rating is just two notches below the best possible rating Moody’s offers. In a news release, Moody’s said Sag Harbor’s new rating “reflects the district’s continued practice of conservative fiscal management” and “incorporates the district’s sizable and wealthy tax base, modest debt burden, and manageable pension liability.”

Katy Graves, Sag Harbor’s superintendent, said the upgrade would benefit taxpayers because a high credit rating allows the district to borrow money at lower interest rates. The district borrows money every year in the form of a tax anticipation note, or TAN, to finance operations until the revenue from property taxes comes in. Sag Harbor is also in the process of issuing $9 million in bonds to fund a capital project, approved by voters in 2013, that includes installing a turf athletic field and improvements to Pierson Middle and High School’s cafeteria, auditorium, and basement, among other projects.

“When we go out for a bond or for a TAN, it’s costing us less as a district to utilize those moneys,” Ms. Graves said. “We’ll pay less in interest for those as a district. That’s really good news.”

The upgrade from Moody’s is the second time in the last three years that Sag Harbor’s bond credit rating has gone up. Ms. Graves said the district voluntarily took Moody’s up on an evaluation, and it paid off.

“It was a brave move to go out there and do that to assess where we are, but it saves the district so much money,” she said. “Now, funds that would have gone into the budgeting process as interest have been reduced significantly. . . . These small captures are so important for the long run because over and over again, it comes back to you.”