Anybody who has flipped through The New Yorker or Playboy during the past 50 years has encountered the cartoons of Gahan Wilson, instantly recognizable for their black humor and bizarre and often grisly images. Mr. Wilson is frequently referred to as “a master of the macabre,” and rightfully so. It is, therefore, something of a surprise that his Sag Harbor house turns out to be not a crumbling, overgrown castle with grotesque monsters glaring from the windows, but rather a bright, charming place with neither a dungeon nor a ghoul in sight.



    Last week, Mr. Wilson was present at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor for a screening of Steven-Charles Jaffe’s documentary “Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird.” According to his wife, Nancy Winters, a writer, “Gahan will wear his cape — which he never likes to do.”



    The film’s title refers to Mr. Wilson’s entrance into the world, which the cartoonist has described thus: “Gahan Wilson, nephew of a lion tamer, descendant of P.T. Barnum, was born dead. After 10 minutes of rigorous alternate dunkings in hot and iced water he reluctantly came to life. He suspects there may have been brain damage.”



    Not to be outdone, Ms. Winters, asked how long she has been living in Sag Harbor, said, “I’ve been coming here since I was a baby. I was swept out to sea when I was 6 at the Prospect Hotel, which used to be on Shelter Island. I was walking out, got caught in the tide, and I was too shy to cry for help.” Neither Mr. Wilson nor Ms. Winters seems the worse for these early ordeals.



    Mr. Wilson’s unconventional birth took place in Evanston, Ill., in 1930. His father was an executive with the Acme Steel Company, and both parents were talented amateur artists. As far back as he can remember, Mr. Wilson loved to draw. “I never had any other ambition,” he said over iced coffee and a muffin. “That’s what I wanted to be, that’s what I was going to do.”



    After a year in a conventional high school, Mr. Wilson transferred to the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Ill. Roger Hill, who became headmaster in 1921, rejected examinations and traditional academics in favor of practical experience. “It was a wonderful school,” Mr. Wilson recalls. “They encouraged you in whatever direction you wanted to go.” Another famous alumnus was Orson Welles, who often returned after graduating to see student productions, stroll the campus, and dine with the students.



    Mr. Wilson went from high school to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned a B.F.A. degree and, in 2012, an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts. His many other awards include the National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2004 Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention — the other winner that year was Stephen King. Mr. Wilson also designed the award for the World Fantasy Convention, a bust of H.P. Lovecraft, the writer in whose memory the first convention was held. “It actually looks like him,” said Mr. Wilson.



    After college, “It was pretty clear that if you wanted to do magazine cartoons, you had to go to New York,” recalled Mr. Wilson. He started out with small magazines, where cartoonists were expected to bring, and present, their work. “They either go for it, or they don’t,” Mr. Wilson said. “But within a few months, I was able to support myself. I’ve had a lot of lucky breaks.”



    Even at The New Yorker, cartoonists, no matter how eminent, bring their work in each week for the editor’s judgment. It’s a very sociable world, according to Mr. Wilson. “Cartoonists all know each other. There’s no competition, no plotting or claiming to belong to a superior school of cartooning. Experimentation is welcome by everybody.”



    Mr. Wilson’s first Playboy cartoon appeared in the December 1957 issue. In 2009, Fantagraphics Books published “Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons,” a three-volume, slip-cased set. “He hasn’t missed an issue in half a century,” wrote Hugh Hefner, editor and publisher of Playboy, in an introduction to the first volume. “He is, in many respects, one of a kind. The readers love him, and so do I.” While his palette expanded over the years — it was Mr. Hefner’s idea to limit it at first — Mr. Wilson’s drawing style and demented sense of humor were fully formed from the very beginning.



    Not surprisingly, among the artists Mr. Wilson most admires are Goya, Daumier, and Hogarth. He also recalled a used bookstore in Evanston where, at the age of 15, he discovered Punch, a satirical British weekly magazine established in 1841. It was most influential in the mid-19th century, when it helped to coin the term “cartoon” in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. “I bought the entire shelf, for 15 cents an issue. It was an enormous influence on me.”



    Asked how he gets an idea, Mr. Wilson said it was difficult to describe the process. “You start with a subject — maybe something in the newspaper. It’s a free-floating thing. You sort of go into a trance. It’s really fun and occasionally downright thrilling.” And, yes, he does laugh at his own cartoons. “Whether it’s laugh or be scared, if it doesn’t do it for me, it won’t do it for anyone else.”



    As the conversation wound down, Ms. Winters appeared with a small piece of paper, approximately 2 by 4 inches, torn from a memo pad. Sketched in ink was an overhead view of a railroad station platform and tracks Mr. Wilson made while waiting for a train in Westport, Conn. “Something on the tracks caught his attention,” said Ms. Winters, though it was difficult to tell what it was from the drawing. “It’s a sketch for a New Yorker cover,” she added.



    “Only if they decide to use it,” Mr. Wilson added. Keep your eyes peeled.

    The East Hampton Town Board’s two Democratic members balked last Thursday at approving the payment of consultants’ bills for work related to the East Hampton Airport, saying that the bills had not been authorized by the entire town board, nor had they seen the work.



    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc voted against a resolution offered by Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the board’s airport liaison, calling for payment totaling $56,319 to DY Consultants for work on an airport security plan, an airport layout plan drawing, a plan for the removal of obstructions (trees) within the airport landing and takeoff area, and the first phase of work documenting airport noise, which could lead to airport use restrictions.



    Both also voted no on a resolution to pay the same consultants an additional $80,000 to design an airport perimeter fence, for which the board had sought Federal Aviation Administration funding, and Mr. Van Scoyoc voted against scheduling a Nov. 21 hearing on a five-year airport capital improvement plan.



    A total of $945,000 was included in this year’s airport budget for legal fees, consultants, and contracts with other professionals. On Oct. 3, the board majority, over Ms. Overby’s objection, moved $165,000 from an airport surplus fund to pay for services beyond what had been budgeted.



    Both Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc suggested this week that the cost overruns could be part of a deliberate strategy to force the town’s hand on airport management decisions, a topic of continued controversy among many residents. Some want East Hampton to stop taking F.A.A. money for the airport, in the hope that the town could then impose local noise-control restrictions, while others see no need to have taxpayers foot the airport bill and believe that what is really afoot is a movement to close down the facility.



     “We’re bankrupting the airport, and that might be by design,” Ms. Overby said on Tuesday.



    Questions about airport-related bills prompted the board last month to enact a policy whereby the town Finance Department audits all such bills, with charges and completed work checked against the terms of the consultants’ contracts.



    In a Sept. 17 briefing to the board, Charlene Kagel, a town accountant, said that some work performed by consultants, for which payment was being sought, was outside the scope of what had been specifically approved by the full town board.



    Other agreements, she said, were vague and did not list, for instance, a maximum cap on the eventual charges.



    “There are certain things getting done there that I don’t think the board would necessarily agree to have done, and we’re getting billed for it,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said during that discussion.



    “Somebody from this town has to have said go ahead,” Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said. “That work was being done at the request of people in this town that the town board didn’t know about. And that is a complete abuse of the way the town should operate . . . the reality is that DY did work; we right here, right now, do not know the basis on which they acted.”



    “This particular policy requires that what you describe never happens,” Len Bernard, the budget officer, said of the new procedures.



    The board has repeatedly questioned Mr. Stanzione in his capacity as airport liaison, with Ms. Quigley in particular levying charges that he has acted on airport matters without discussion with, or authority of, the board.



    Mr. Stanzione conceded last summer that he had worked with Jim Brundige, the airport manager, to shift suggested helicopter approach and takeoff routes without first discussing it with the board, but has contended recently that the scope of all of the consultants’ work has been under the aegis of board-approved projects.



    Both Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc contended that the work listed on the recent $56,000 DY Consultants invoice was not fully authorized by the board.



    “Approving projects after the fact is really a bad way to do business with taxpayer money,” Ms. Overby said.



    “Some of this work has been done, you might as well call it, in private,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said Tuesday. “As a town board member, I haven’t seen anything.”



    “Has that work product been presented to the board?” he asked of the “airport use restriction plan, phase one.” “When are we going to see it?”    



    Kathleen Cunningham, who heads the Quiet Skies Coalition, a civic group, has asked for the initial report at several recent board meetings. The consultants gave a presentation to the board, Mr. Stanzione told her. “I’m sure it’s on video . . . I’m sure there’s some paperwork associated with it.”



    “These are policy issues, and money’s being expended, and who authorized the funds to be released? We basically blew the budget by well over $100,000. Where was the fiscal responsibility?” Mr. Van Scoyoc asked.    



    Last month Mr. Bernard said that $96,000 had been spent of a total $100,000 budget this year for Peter Kirsch’s fees, with a $56,000 bill still outstanding. The attorney is paid $440 an hour.



     “This is politics,” Mr. Stanzione said last Thursday, about the two Democrats’ “no” votes.



    “No, this is money,” said Ms. Overby.    



    “This is real money, and it’s real money spent without the board knowing about it,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.



    “I’m very concerned that we funded a project that is not in the budget and does not follow the recently enacted town policy,” Ms. Overby said Tuesday.



    Depleting the airport fund surplus, she said, could limit the town’s options regarding accepting or declining new F.A.A. grants, which could affect the degree of local control over the airport.



    At the end of last year, Mr. Bernard told the town board last month, the airport fund had a surplus of $1.4 million. The year-end projection for 2013, he said, is that this year’s airport operating budget would be overspent by $300,000.



    Ms. Overby said she had no settled opinion yet as to whether the town should accept additional F.A.A. grants, as “we have had no [economic] analysis of whether the airport could be self-sustaining.” But, she said of accepting the federal dollars, “Don’t back me into a corner and make me have to do it.” The airport spending, she said, “just reeks of something, as if they’re backing us into a corner.”



    She  is concerned, she said, not only with the board’s oversight of the work being done by outside hires, but also with some of the particular charges — a $195 dinner, for example, on a bill submitted by Mr. Kirsch, the town’s aviation attorney, which took place during a trip by Councilman Stanzione to Washington, D.C., on the town’s dime. When the bills were audited by the town’s finance department, she said, reimbursement for some expenditures was denied.



    Airport-related charges approved this year included a $103,632 continuing contract with Exelis,  a company that provides an aircraft tracking system called AirScene, used to bill landing fees and to develop noise data, and a $70,201 increase in the fees paid to Robinson Aviation for operating a seasonal control tower last year, bringing that cost to a total of $412,801.

    During Tuesday night’s East Hampton School Board meeting, members heard a plea from a parent to do something about drugs offered for sale at East Hampton High School and weighed whether to deploy drug-sniffing dogs through the school’s halls.



    A Latino parent addressed the board at the end of the evening, during the second opportunity for public comment. She said a student at the high school had recently offered her child cocaine. Five other Latino parents sat nearby, later echoing much the same.



     “The kids were offered drugs at lunchtime, and another kid saw it in the bathrooms,” she said. “I worry for my son.”



    On Wednesday morning, Patricia Hope, the board president, said the issue had been debated previously, but that vocal opposition from one or two parents had tabled the idea. She explained that if drug-sniffing dogs were ultimately approved, students would remain in their classrooms while the dogs and their handlers walked up and down the halls passing student lockers, accompanied by Adam Fine, the principal. “It would provide one layer of deterrence,” Ms. Hope, said, stressing that “no kid is going to be sniffed.”



    The board had mentioned the possibility at the start of Tuesday’s meeting, and the issue will be brought up for debate at the next meeting, on Nov. 5. Ms. Hope urged parents to attend, so that “everyone has an opportunity to speak up.” In the intervening three weeks, she urged parents to make their opinions known: “If you have something to say send an e-mail, make a phone call, send a letter.”



    Tuesday’s meeting began with a brief humorous skit by four members of the high school’s drama club, in honor of School Board Recognition Week. A reception followed the conclusion of the two-hour meeting.



    Robert Tymann, the assistant district superintendent, spoke about recent state test scores at East Hampton Middle School. Though scores for students at the middle school fell, in some grades quite considerably, they corresponded to averages across the state, he said. When compared to Springs, Montauk, Southampton, Hampton Bays, and Riverhead, he said the middle school was “headed in the right direction,” and had the possibility of soon becoming a top-performing district.”



    Last year’s sixth-grade English language arts results fell from 62 to 44. Sixth-grade math scores were 7 points above the state average, while seventh-grade E.L.A. scores were 20 points above the state average. Among eighth graders, the scores were 15 points above the state average on the E.L.A, exam, and 25 points above the state average in math.



    Later in the meeting, Jeff Thompson and Amy Falkenhan, John M. Marshall Elementary School teachers, gave a presentation on experimental technology, called ActiVote, being used in fourth and fifth grades for guidance and remediation. Teachers present a series of questions on a projector, and using a handheld device each student provides an individual response, with answers appearing anonymously for all to see. They explained that teachers receive immediate feedback, tied to each student, and are able to differentiate instruction and review material where confusion proves widespread.



    In other news, the board continued to weigh the use of the district’s facilities, particularly its policy of renting fields to for-profit organizations. A copy of the most current draft of a new policy was not made available, though board members debated its content. Jackie Lowey, a board member, also urged the district to revamp its Web site, saying it has consistently proven difficult and cumbersome to navigate.



    In addition, the board voted to approve a student jazz band trip to the Disney’s Jazz It Up Workshop in Orlando, Fla., next April. Students will raise funds to cover the $1,000 cost for each, with the district footing the $500 transportation bill. Physics students will participate in Six Flags Great Adventure Physics Day on April 25 at a cost of $30 per student, and the district will cover transportation there in the amount of $2,800. The boys and girls cross-country teams will attend an invitational at Brown University in Rhode Island, with the district to cover $1,550 for transportation.



    In other business, the board accepted the resignation of Joyce Daniels, a clerk typist, effective Oct. 18. She was later appointed a part-time bus driver for a probationary period of 26 weeks, with an annual salary of $18,325, effective Oct. 21.

    With beach erosion in Montauk now designated an emergency and the Army Corps of Engineers ready and willing to begin beach reconstruction here — and foot the bill for it — the project, which could have a long-lasting and wide-ranging impact on the nature of Montauk and its ocean shore, is at the fore for both town officials and the community.



    The Army Corps is evaluating alternatives for the project, which include dredging and adding sand or constructing a rock wall to be buried under the sand along the downtown Montauk beach.



    The Corps is expected to issue the town a report listing the viable options, as well as a recommended course of action, by early next month. Congress has authorized $5.3 billion for post-Hurricane Sandy rebuilding efforts, of which $700 million could be spent on the projects in the Army Corps’s so-called Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation project, of which Montauk is a part.



    However, competition for the money from other storm-affected communities, some hit much more severely than Montauk, and a desire not to lose out on the opportunity to improve the beach at no local cost, has town officials acting under time pressure to come to a consensus on what would be acceptable.



    “There is no hard and fast deadline” for a decision, said Brian Beedenbender, a district director at Representative Tim Bishop’s Patchogue office, but “a long, drawn-out disagreement could imperil the funding.”



    In addition, he said, if a course of action is not set by some time in December, dredging could likely not take place during a limited time window early next year, based on environmental concerns, and another hurricane season could come and go before protection for the beach and downtown Montauk is in place.



    In an effort to provide information about the effects of various approaches to rebuilding the beach, Concerned Citizens of Montauk, a nonprofit environmental group, hosted a forum on Saturday with two coastal scientists, Stephen P. Leatherman and Orrin H. Pilkey.



    Both experts strongly advised against the installation of permanent hard structures such as buried rock or a seawall, which, they said, lead to eventual loss of the beach where they are placed and nearby. Their comments are reported in a separate story in today’s Star.



    While C.C.O.M. held its public information session to provide “the foundation for a conversation” in the community, as the organization’s executive director, Jeremy Samuelson, said on Saturday, Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has been saying since early in the year that a hard structure is needed to protect downtown Montauk motels.



    In January, Mr. Wilkinson delivered a “Montauk Beach Restoration Project” report to Congressman Tim Bishop and other officials, for submission to the Army Corps, that included a “solution” described in the report as a “no greater than 2.3-mile engineered beach” in front of “unprotected motels.” A plan drawn up by Aram Terchunian of First Coastal Corporation, included in the document, entails a $19.9 million sand replenishment between the western edge of the village and Ditch Plain, with a 4,475-foot rock-cored dune in the downtown area, with a boardwalk and promenade and nine pedestrian and vehicular access points.



    The Army Corps assumed it was an official submission on the part of the town indicating the municipality’s preferred option for beach protection in Montauk, Steve Couch, a representative of the Corps, said during his Sept. 26 presentation to the board. However, the entire town board had neither discussed nor authorized preparation of the report or having First Coastal draw up a seawall plan.



    Asked by Rona Klopman, an Amagansett resident, at a meeting last Thursday about when the document might be made available to the public, the supervisor said, “I don’t think it will be; I don’t intend to.”



    “I had a private conversation and analysis that I gave to Tim [Bishop] and to [Assemblyman] Fred Thiele and to Senator [Kenneth] LaValle and maybe Senator [Kirsten] Gillibrand. It was my own analysis. . . .”



    “As the C.F.O. of the town, as the supervisor who’s in charge of relationships with certain of our electeds throughout the U.S., I find that it’s a private communication,” Mr. Wilkinson said. He said the document was also submitted to the Army Corps.



    Earlier this week, Mr. Bishop’s office readily provided a copy of the document, which it said had been used to help make the successful pitch to the Army Corps to pursue a beach restoration project in Montauk.



    A cost-benefit analysis being undertaken by the Army Corps as it narrows down the feasible options for the project will, according to agency policies, focus solely on the protection offered by, and initial and long-term costs of, the various types of projects, such as installing a hard structure or rebuilding the beach with only sand. The options will be outlined, along with a recommended course of action, in the forthcoming report.



    The cost-benefit analysis is not a review of the value of protecting downtown Montauk to the overall economy, Mr. Beedenbender at Mr. Bishop’s office explained this week.



    The January document that Mr. Wilkinson had prepared was apparently attempting to make that case. It asserts, without citation, that Montauk generated $912 million in tourism revenue in 2012, and 37 percent of the tourism revenue in Suffolk County.



    The accuracy of some of the figures cited was called into question this week. On a page headed “Economic Engine,” the report depicts Gurney’s Inn, the Sloppy Tuna, the Montauk Manor, and Gosman’s restaurant. The report also contains letters from Paul Monte, the general manager and C.E.O. of Gurney’s, and from Steve Kalimnios, an owner and vice president of the Royal Atlantic motel, which is on the downtown beach, and labels those two hotels as “sample businesses,” providing figures regarding their budgets, payroll, and taxes.



    At a work session in Montauk on Tuesday, Mr. Wilkinson advised caution about asking the Army Corps to consider extending the beach reconstruction project beyond the downtown area to Ditch Plain, as the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee has recommended.



     Mr. Wilkinson said that the Army Corps, in deciding which communities to include in the Fire Island to Montauk Point shore reconstruction program “initially said Montauk isn’t worth it. They’ve come a little further,” he said, but “I think to add another mile of beach to the option is just never going to happen.”



    At its meeting on Monday night, the Montauk citizens group passed a resolution requesting that the town board consult an independent coastal engineer for expert guidance, that the options be evaluated based on current information about the condition of the beach, and that the board look into expanding the project to Ditch Plain.



    “I think part of the reason the Army Corps of Engineers focused on downtown is because that’s where the economic analysis focused,” Chris Poli, a Montauk resident, said on Tuesday, referring to the document submitted by Mr. Wilkinson earlier this year. “That has not been done for Ditch. I would encourage the board to do that.”



    “If we had all the time in the world and all the money in the world, we would certainly do these things,” Councilman Dominick Stanzione said, stressing the time frame.



    Instead of asking the Army Corps to expand its project, perhaps the town could piggyback on the presence of the Corps’s dredge, and itself arrange and pay for sand replenishment at Ditch, Mr. Wilkinson suggested along with Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and Mr. Stanzione.



    Should the Army Corps base its evaluations on the existing beach conditions, rather than using information collected immediately after Hurricane Sandy, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said, “the costs would come down,” as the downtown beach, at least, has widened. The Ditch Plain beach, she said, “is the only emergency we as a town really had to deal with, and put sand there.”



    In addition, said Ed Braun, a member of C.C.O.M.’s board of directors, should a beach reconstruction project include Ditch, it might ultimately bring down costs for the downtown area of the project, as sand along the Montauk shore drifts from east to west, the two beach experts said Saturday.



    Andy Harris, another Montauk resident and C.C.O.M. board member, asked the town board to describe the next steps it would take in communicating with the Army Corps, as well as the “opportunity for public participation.”



    “I would tend to have . . . a conversation with Steve Couch,” said Mr. Wilkinson, referring to the Army Corps representative from the Sept. 26 presentation.





    The supervisor said that day that he had planned to have a private briefing from Mr. Couch, but other board members wanted to attend, making the meeting open to the public.



    “The board is concerned that I don’t act alone, or at least I’ve heard some of that,” he commented Tuesday.



    “In the interim,” Mr. Stanzione said, “as much public comment as could be thoughtfully executed would be welcome.”



    Mr. Monte, a member of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, said the group was holding its annual conference later this month, and suggested that Mr. Wilkinson, or another town official, attend.

    For Carmita Barros, the past year has been filled with unspeakable grief.



    A year ago Sunday, her son David Hernandez Barros took his own life.



    David, then a 16-year-old junior at East Hampton High School, hanged himself in the bathroom of the family’s former basement apartment in East Hampton. They immediately moved to a rental house in Springs. Ms. Barros never stepped foot back in the apartment again.



    “This month was hard for me. This month was just terrible,” Ms. Barros said in her living room on Tuesday afternoon. She had just gotten off a shift at the Maidstone Market in Springs, where she works six days a week. Over the past year, she has suffered constant bouts of depression. “I don’t like September.”



    According to Ms. Barros and her daughter, Gabriella, prior to taking his own life, David had been bullied by six classmates, all of whom were Latino. David was apparently tormented for being gay. Though he had been meeting each week with a social worker and a psychiatrist, the anguish ultimately grew too great.



    “David was often pushed on purpose, made inappropriate remarks to, and verbally harassed,” wrote Ms. Barros in a letter to Adam Fine, East Hampton High School’s principal, last fall. In it, she said the students’ conduct created an “intimidating, threatening, and abusive educational environment.”



    On the South Fork, since 2009 three Latino students have taken their own lives.



    Following David’s death on Sept. 29, 2012, in November of last year Emilio Padilla-Berrezueta, an 18-year-old junior at Southampton High School who was days away from transferring to East Hampton High School, committed suicide. And in December 2009, Tatiana Giraldo-Fajardo, then 17 and a senior at East Hampton, died at home in Montauk.



    Taken together, the three suicides have forced school officials and community members to confront the difficulty of ethnic assimilation. Particularly at many South Fork public schools, where the Latino population has risen considerably over the past decade, administrators are hoping to quickly bridge the divide. The hope is to transcend not only cultural differences, but a language barrier as well — and all before another young life is lost.



    On the night of Sept. 25, East Hampton High School convened a two-hour evening of healing inside its auditorium. About 40 people, including several school administrators, were in the audience.



    Mr. Fine delivered opening remarks, followed by presentations from several people affiliated with the New York State Office of Mental Health and the Family Service League, and Gail Schonfeld, an East Hampton pediatrician, among others. Spanish translation followed. The evening included statistics on the prevalence of suicide, warning signs to watch for, and a host of resources for those at risk.



    “I want to applaud East Hampton High School. Many others schools wouldn’t have opened their doors,” said Melanie Puorto-Conte, who directs New York State Office of Mental Health’s Suicide Prevention Initiative. “They call us back again and again. The school is open to making this a safe place for students.”



    This spring, Ms. Puorto-Conte’s staff conducted numerous workshops for teachers and staff. She considers East Hampton an ideal partner in hoping to build a better safety net.



    “We like schools to be proactive and willing to work with us, instead of closing the door and just wanting to make this go away,” she said in a follow-up conversation. “Schools are frightened about this topic.”



    East Hampton has taken the reverse stance. “We’ve been an open book about it,” Mr. Fine said. “We simply cannot lose a child again.”



    “He’s inspirational. He’s been so welcoming and proactive,” Ms. Puorto-Conte said of Mr. Fine’s leadership. “He’s a template that would be nice to replicate all over the state.”



    David’s suicide occurred during the beginning of Mr. Fine’s third year as principal. The past year has been one of admitting defeat and learning how to do his job differently.



    “It taught me not only to examine the appearance of what’s going on. No matter what you think is going on or how great you think things are, you need to start stripping away the layers and get to what’s really going on,” Mr. Fine said Monday morning. “Don’t just trust what your first inclination is. For three years, we thought everything was going just great. We didn’t recognize this was such an area of need and have since started reaching out to our Spanish-speaking population.”





Latino Outreach



    In the year since David’s suicide, the school — and the district — has made several changes. Besides implementing a social-climate survey at the high school in February, the district has increased its outreach to the Latino community considerably. Last December, the district hired Ana Nunez, who works as its community liaison, to help improve ties between the school and the Spanish-speaking community.



    Next week, for instance, Ms. Nunez will host two separate welcome-back nights at the John M. Marshall Elementary School for Spanish-speaking parents. She will answer questions about the school’s curriculum, paying particular attention to its English as a second language program. Child care will also be provided. It is a service that a year ago simply did not exist.



    Meanwhile, Mr. Fine has tried to increase Latino participation at his principal-parent breakfasts and has made an effort to increase outreach in his Google group, an e-mail listserv that routinely goes out to parents.



    “It’s a large segment of our population that we need to bring into the fold more,” Mr. Fine said. While the Latino population is around 40 percent, English-language learners constitute around 10 percent. And while he used to be content with 30 parents showing up at his breakfasts, he is now aware of the racial and ethnic breakdown — and of how many parents he has yet to reach. “It’s a big group and they’re my kids, too. It’s changed me.”



    Just that morning, a teacher had visited his office, raising possible concerns about a student’s emotional state. “Everybody is hypersensitive now,” Mr. Fine said. “But I’d rather have a hypersensitive school than an insensitive institution that just cares about test scores.”



    But despite the inroads, Ms. Barros simply wants her son back.



    “It’s very hard for me,” she said. She still can’t bring herself to drive past the high school. “I remember my little boy every day. I remember him every day.”



    Besides her 19-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and her 13-month-old granddaughter, Jocelyn, she also cares for her 9-year-old son, Luis, who attends the Springs School. Were it not for her surviving children and grandchild, Ms. Barros does not know how she would make it out of bed most mornings.



    Part of her frustration, she said, is that despite repeated requests, the students who bullied David never received adequate punishment. Gabriella still runs into some of them at parties. Ms. Barros has seen them at her workplace.



    In August, Ms. Barros and her daughter attended the opening of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Center at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. One of the community rooms was named in honor of David.



    “I was so happy to see that the center has opened and that it might help another kid with the same problems,” said Gabriella, who was the last person to see her brother alive. Over the past month, she can’t help but relive their final hours together. It’s a memory she fears will be with her always.



    Gabriella thinks the center might have served as a potential refuge, a place where her brother could finally feel safe. “I’m so happy that room is there and that it’s in my brother’s memory,” she said. Both mother and daughter wiped away tears. “I see him in heaven now, so happy because his dream has finally come true.”

    In recent weeks, the East Hampton Town Police log has been peppered with “quality-of-life” weekend entries, minor and not so minor incidents occurring in and around downtown Montauk and, to a lesser extent, Amagansett’s popular night-time hotspots.



    On Tuesday, Chief Edward Ecker read through some of the recent summonses. “Urination in public, urination in public, open container, open container, camping on the beach. . . .” The list, including summonses for littering, went on. Since Memorial Day, 242 quality-of-life summonses have been issued in Montauk alone.



     “Part-time officers are deployed to do the quality-of-life stuff,” said the chief, but “as the summer rolls on, we supplement the part-time officers by adding full-time officers just getting off at midnight,” when, according to the logs, the summonses flow freely. Those officers, who patrol areas that tend to be the source of public annoyance, are paid at overtime rates for an extra four hours of work. The nighttime operation is run weekly by Sgt. Peter Schmitt, a 17-year veteran of the force.



    Between midnight Friday and 2 a.m., nine quality-of-life summonses were issued, all in the immediate vicinity of the Point Bar and Grill and the Memory Motel in Montauk.



    The wildness starts a bit later on Saturday nights. In a single hour early Sunday, between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m., town police wrote seven summonses in the same Montauk area.



    Besides the quality-of-life issues, police are on the lookout for drugs. Not a weekend passes during the summer when there are not arrests made in downtown Montauk for possession of marijuana, as well as possession of small amounts of cocaine.



    Fights are another problem. Police keep an open channel to the security staffs at the various establishments, in order to react to a problem before it gets out of hand.



    Chief Ecker, who is himself a Montauk resident, said the perimeters of several bars and clubs in particular are the targets for patrolling officers. The establishments are magnets for young people seeking a good time, drawing large crowds that drink, dance, and in some cases misbehave.



    In downtown Montauk, officers focus on Main Street, not only around and behind the Memory and across the street at the Point, but also on the roads, parkland, and parking lots immediately adjacent to those bars and near the Sloppy Tuna. Other targets are Ruschmeyer’s on Second House Road and the Surf Lodge on South Edgemere (although Chief Ecker said the Surf Lodge clientele seems to be far more code compliant after leaving the premises than the throngs downtown, who tend to be younger and not as affluent).



    Also on the police radar are taxis, which have been a constant source of complaint from visitors and locals alike. The police issue quality-of-life summonses for overloaded cabs and constantly check the documentation of the drivers and their vehicles.



    Local taxi drivers nevertheless say not enough is done to regulate the out-of-town cabs that flood Montauk on weekends. “They made us get an office. Where are the offices of these other companies?” Jerry Uribe, a driver and dispatcher for Surf Taxi, asked Tuesday.



    The sprawling late-night street scene outside the Stephen Talkhouse and Indian Wells Tavern in Amagansett, which police say spills over to the town parking lot in back, is on the radar as well.



    “It’s a target-rich environment,” Chief Ecker said, promising more of the same as the summer winds down.

    Two former East Hampton Town fire marshals have come forward to question the authenticity of documents attributed to them that were used to justify the town’s seizure of cars and equipment from a Montauk mechanic in 2009.

    Lawyers for Thomas Ferreira, the mechanic, who has filed a civil rights action in federal court, claim that at least two documents were falsified to distort facts and to suppress evidence of a “conspiracy” to force Mr. Ferreira from his 63 Navy Road property. The attorneys say the fire marshals’ statements confirm their belief that Madeleine Narvilas, a former assistant town attorney, engineered the documents with the knowledge of John Jilnicki, who remains the top town attorney.

Link to Letter



    Neither Mr. Jilnicki nor Ms. Narvilas responded to several requests for comment.

    Interviewed last week, James Dunlop, former assistant chief fire marshal and chief of the town’s hazardous materials unit, said he decided to speak out in order to right an “injustice,” the full extent of which became clear to him, he said, only after Mr. Ferreira’s property was raided on June 22, 2009. Mr. Dunlop, who had inspected the property himself over a month before the raid, claimed that his report of that inspection, which found Mr. Ferreira’s Automotive Solutions free of any risk to the community, was altered without his knowledge.

    Mr. Dunlop said he learned that his letter informing the mechanic that his property had passed inspection, normally sent out within a week, had been suppressed for over a month, during which, he said, it was withheld from the town board. The board voted on June 18 to raid Mr. Ferreira’s property. When the mechanic finally received Mr. Dunlop’s letter — later that same day, leaving him no time for legal redress — it contained an added paragraph that contradicted his original, free-of-risk finding.

    The paragraph Mr. Dunlop said did not belong in his long-delayed letter reads: “Be advised that this inspection was based on the fire code of New York State and not the Property Maintenance Code, which is enforced by the code enforcement department.” Mr. Dunlop said he had never used the language because there was no need.

    “I inspected hotels, motels, overcrowded houses. If it was housing, it had to do with me.”

    Mr. Dunlop said he did not know who might have added the paragraph to his inspection report. “It twisted what I had done. If they added it, why wasn’t I told? Everybody knew they didn’t want him there. Look at the chain of command. Reports are generated by the secretary, but she would not have done this on her own.”

    David Artsen, an attorney with the firm Devitt, Spellman, and Barrett of Smithtown, represents East Hampton Town in the civil rights action. Also named in the action are former Town Supervisor Bill McGintee, four former town board members, East Hampton Town Police Lt. Thomas Grenci, Ms. Narvilas, Mr. Jilnicki, and Dominic Shirripa and Kenneth Glogg, former code enforcement inspectors. Mr. Artsen did not return calls for comment.

    There were two raids on Automotive Solutions in 2009, the one in June and another on Sept. 14, both conducted on the grounds that the business posed a danger to “the greater Montauk community,” a description at odds with the stated opinion of Mr. Dunlop, the town’s most experienced official in matters of hazardous materials. The report of Mr. Dunlop’s May inspection stated that “no violations of the state and local code were noted . . . We would like to congratulate you on this attention to fire safety in your place of business.”

    The two raids resulted in the confiscation of equipment and a subsequent tax lien on Mr. Ferreira’s property. Thomas Horn, a former town fire marshal, and Lawrence Kelly are representing him in the case.

    Michael Johnson was Mr. Dunlop’s superior at the time of the first raid, when over $150,000 worth of equipment was seized. He said on Monday that in the week before it took place he had worked with Ms. Narvilas to create a document she said was needed “for court.”

    “I thought she was going for a search warrant. I was floored to learn of the raid. Our office was not involved in it,” Mr. Johnson said. The raid was conducted without a warrant.

    Mr. Johnson said Ms. Narvilas enlisted his help in justifying the raid three days before it took place, during a meeting attended by Mr. Jilnicki. In three strongly worded paragraphs, the document in question urges that Mr. Dunlop’s positive inspection report be ignored, and asserts that numerous flammable and combustible liquids from abandoned vehicles “present the real possibility of a potential catastrophe.”

    The document draws a distinction between a “repair area,” which falls within the jurisdiction of the town fire marshal, and the rest of Mr. Ferreira’s property, which it says comes under the governance of the town code enforcement department. In rebuttal, Mr. Ferreira contends that all of 63 Navy Road was considered an auto repair facility under state law. At the time of the raid he held, and still holds, a state license to operate an auto repair shop, as well as a fire marshal’s business permit. He maintains that even if part of his property fell under the state property maintenance law, as the document asserts, code enforcement had no authorization to administer that law.

    “She knew the town had no authority under section 167-12 of the property maintenance code,” the section that Ms. Narvilas cited to justify the raid, said Mr. Horn.

    Asked by town attorneys to authorize both the June 22 and Sept. 14 raids, town board members were referred to inspection reports written by Mr. Glogg, the code enforcement inspector, who had warned of the danger of gasoline, oil, and “possibly diesel fuel” stored in vehicles.

    According to Mr. Ferreira, Mr. Glogg never inspected the vehicles at Automotive Solutions other than to check their registrations.

    Mr. Johnson insisted on Monday that the June 19 memo “was not based on Jim Dunlop’s inspection.” He said he had helped with the wording of it, as requested, but that his input was based solely on a drive-by inspection. “I told them I wasn’t going on the property.”

    The former chief fire marshal said he could not explain how a second version of the memo later appeared, on fire marshal office stationery, backdated to June 18, the day the town board approved the raid. It is headed “From Michael Johnson, chief fire marshal,” and directed “to Madeleine Narvilas, assistant town attorney.”

    “I don’t know if it’s mine or not. I don’t understand the two dates,” said Mr. Johnson.

    Mr. Ferreira’s lawyers, Mr. Horn and Mr. Kelly, obtained the June 19 memo through a freedom of information request of town attorney Robert Connelly, who found it on Ms. Narvilas’s computer. (Ms. Narvilas left the town’s employ in July 2010.) They found the version on the fire marshal’s stationery in town records. Except for the date, the wording of the documents is essentially the same.

    “In seeking to pass on the responsibility for the suppression of the Jim Dunlop May 15 inspection and clean bill of health, John Jilnicki and Madeleine Narvilas instead provide . . . sufficient proof of their complicity,” Mr. Kelly wrote as part of an interrogatory exchange with the defendants’ attorneys. Mr. Kelly maintained during that exchange that the amended Dunlop letter and memo from the chief fire marshal to Ms. Narvilas were meant to create “false business records.”

    In a telephone conversation, the lawyer said it was done “to hide the fact that Mr. Ferreira’s civil rights had been violated,” and “to cover up the fact that town officials had conspired,” with civic groups and at least one real estate agent seeking to sell the mechanic’s neighboring house, to drive Mr. Ferreira from his home and business.

    Mr. Kelly said Ms. Narvilas acted after Mr. Ferreira’s lawyer at the time caught wind of an impending raid and threatened on June 16 to seek a restraining order. Mr. Horn concurred, saying the town attorney had “falsified a public record. She would have relied on a falsified document in front of a judge.”

     Pat Mansir, who was on the town board at the time, has said the board was never shown Mr. Dunlop’s inspection report before it voted to raid the Ferreira property. Nor, she said, was the board shown a 2003 memo from the late Donald Sharkey, then the chief building inspector, informing Mr. Ferreira that he had a pre-existing, nonconforming right to use of the property as a car-repair facility despite its location in a residential neighborhood.

    Ms. Mansir has retained counsel separate from the other defendants.

--

   Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misidentified Mr. Kelly as a former federal prosecutor. Mr.  Kelly was a senior rule of law advisor for the United States State Department in southern Iraq. He is a former Suffolk assistant district attorney and senior assistant county attorney.

    A coastal erosion committee established by the East Hampton Town Board after mega-storm Sandy took a heavy toll in Montauk agreed on Tuesday that nothing — including revetments and other hard structures — should be discounted as an interim means of defending the hamlet’s business district against storm surge until the beach and dunes, which were severely eroded, could be rebuilt. Such an “engineered” beach is expected to make Montauk eligible for the federal help deemed fundamental to covering the immense cost of bringing in enough sand for a long-term effort to protect Montauk from all but the largest storms.

    The interim measure would include covering hard structures with sand at the expense of shorefront property owners, and it would require that the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, a state-approved approach to coastal protection, be amended.

    Bob DeLuca, a member of the committee who is president of the environmental Group for the East End, suggested that a fifth “reach,” specific to Montauk’s ocean beaches, would have to be added to the four existing coastal zones in the L.W.R.P. He said that the L.W.R.P. said further study of the Montauk area was possible. 

    The committee comprises town officials, business owners, and environmental advocates, with Drew Bennett, an engineer, as chairman. It was formed in December and charged with coming up with an approach to deal with downtown Montauk’s vulnerability. The committee’s recommendations, when finalized, will go to the town board.

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson attended Tuesday’s meeting at Town Hall long enough to report that he had urged Representative Timothy Bishop, State Senator Kenneth LaValle, and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. to press the Army Corps of Engineers to allot $20 million to create an engineered beach from Ditch Plain west through Montauk’s downtown, with the goal of obtaining federal aid in the future. Mr. Wilkinson, calling Montauk’s downtown its economic engine, reported that Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer and Mr. Bishop had met with Army Corps representatives on Monday. 

    The supervisor also held out the possibility that a share of $53 billion approved by Congress for the reimbursement of losses from Sandy could come to Montauk in the form of a 100-percent grant because the vulnerable area had been part of the Army Corps’ Fire Island to Montauk Reformulation Study, decades in the making and still incomplete.

    The L.W.R.P. now calls for the relocation of endangered structures in vulnerable areas such as Montauk’s downtown. But committee members agreed that was not the way to go. It also permits the use of geotubes, sand-filled fabric tubes for temporary erosion control, which members said would not be good enough. A  fifth reach would allow for engineered beach.

    While not objecting to revetments for interim protection, Mr. DeLuca voiced concern that it would be hard to make certain they were kept covered with sand, which, he said, was necessary to decrease the potential for beach scouring.

    Steve Kalimnios, owner of the Royal Atlantic Resort in the downtown area, who installed concrete septic rings in front of the resort after it was nearly toppled by Sandy, suggested that business owners could be required to post bonds that would be forfeited if they failed to keep revetments covered.

    “If we are afraid of rocks on the beach, it means we don’t believe in the big project,” Mr. Kalimnios said, referring to the eventual rebuilding of downtown beaches and dunes.

    Diane McNally, a committee member who is the clerk of the town trustees, warned that it was important to look carefully at conditions that might come with federal aid — “how they might impact the rest of town.”

    Pressure to rebuild Montauk’s downtown beaches is so great that East Hampton Town’s coastal erosion committee floated the idea last week of exporting sand to the hamlet from other parts of town.

    The committee’s priority, said its chairman, Drew Bennett, is to find a way to protect Montauk’s downtown business district which, with its protective dunes eroded, has been left vulnerable to storm surge. The committee was formed by the town board after Hurricane Sandy and charged with coming up with ways to deal with the dangers posed by recurrent storms.

    “The plan,” Mr. Bennett said, was for the committee to keep the federal government’s feet to the fire after Congress promised a reported $3.4 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers to help protect the coast from future storms. Mining sand from offshore deposits is one way this might be done. A report on progress in the effort to attract a portion of the federal money will be presented at the committee’s next meeting, Tuesday, 3 p.m. at Town Hall. The federal money is reportedly contingent on an equal amount of spending cuts in the federal budget.

    Mr. Bennett said the discussion about local sand deposits and how they might help Montauk came about as an interim fix before any long-range federally funded project could be brought to bear.

    Not so fast, said Diane McNally, the East Hampton Town Trustees’ presiding officer, who attended the meeting. Ms. McNally said Tuesday that she recognized downtown Montauk’s dire straits, but the idea of taking sand from trustee-controlled beaches and/or water bodies to rebuild beaches in Montauk where the trustees lost authority in the 19th century posed jurisdictional problems. And, she said it could shortchange ocean and bayfront residents in need of sand in the western part of the township.

    By virtue of a 17th-century patent, the trustees own most of the town’s bay bottom and beaches on behalf of the public. This means trustees control the people’s sand except in Montauk, where they lost sway. Most of the ocean beaches in Montauk are also public, but are under the control of the town board, not the trustees. The beaches are in separate jurisdictions, and, in this case their stewards may have separate priorities.

    Ms. McNally said the idea of shipping sand east from deposits in Georgica Pond and Three Mile, Accabonac, and Northwest Harbors was broached at the meeting, but not fully explored. She sees problems.

    “They want trustee sand in Montauk? There was a time we couldn’t sneeze beyond East Hampton,” she said, alluding to the often-contrary relationship between the trustees and the town board over jurisdiction. “What about the person at Lazy Point who lost a dune? Not everyone cares about Montauk. We have to look at the trustees’ own beaches.”

    Ms. McNally said the real challenge lay in getting the State Department of Environmental Conservation to liberalize its policies involving the mining and dispersal of sand. Currently, the agency allows only 12,000 cubic yards of sand to be removed each year from a large shoal at the southern end of Georgica Pond, a drop in the bucket for beachfront residents who hire contractors to rebuild beaches and dunes to protect their houses.

    A 10-year permit to excavate sand from Georgica Pond will expire on March 14. “So, we will be talking to them about renewing the permit and possibly for more sand. We’re going to ask,” Ms. McNally said.

    She said current D.E.C. policy also had restrictions on where excavated sand can be taken. “They don’t leave it to the trustees. They tell us where to put it.” Sand is supposed to stay within the same littoral area from which it was taken. As it stands, sand excavated from Georgica Pond cannot be trucked to an eroded beach on the bayside of East Hampton, for example.

    The trustee clerk said the town’s coastal policies as well as the state’s needed to be revisited. “When the L.W.R.P. [Local Waterfront Revitalization Program] was created it was done scientifically with no emotion,” she said referring to the omnibus, state-authorized plan to manage coastal protections in East Hampton. It was approved by the State Department of State and became town policy in December of 2007. 

    “Now, with all the storms, there’s emotion,” Ms. McNally said. The threat is no longer theoretical, she said. “The L.W.R.P. is black and white. Perhaps there are some gray areas.” For instance, Ms. McNally said the L.W.R.P. considered sandbags and geocubes (bigger cube-shaped, fabric containers filled with sand) hard structures, and only permitted them on an emergency and temporary business. “What if the plan could be developed so they could go in before winter storms, then taken out in the spring? Not detrimental in the long run. ‘Temporary’ would mean seasonally,” Ms. McNally said.

    Three South Fork students — who were Latino — have committed suicide since 2009, prompting school and mental health professionals to call the need for increased outreach to that community especially acute.

    As the population has grown, Eric J. Bartky, a psychiatrist who counsels children and adolescents from his office in Southampton, cautions that the number of full-time mental health practitioners is too small. Besides financial costs, he said that transportation — or simply getting there — is often the biggest hurdle that young people face.

     In late November, Emilio Padilla-Berrezueta, an 18-year-old junior at Southampton High School who was days away from transferring to East Hampton High School took his life. David H. Hernandez, an East Hampton High School junior, died at home on Sept. 29. And Tatiana Giraldo-Fajardo, then 17 and a senior at East Hampton High, died at her Montauk residence in December of 2009.    

    “Having three suicides in such a short period of time in such a small community is alarming. We’re very concerned,” Dr. Bartky said. As a practitioner, he was familiar with the circumstances surrounding David’s suicide, he said. “It highlights the strong need for better mental health services in the community to treat this underserved population.”

    Dr. Bartky, Gail A. Schonfeld, an East Hampton pediatrician, and Harriett L. Hellman, a pediatric nurse practitioner based in Water Mill, are part of the East End Pediatric Advocacy Workgroup, which helps provide quality mental health care to those who cannot afford it. A large portion of their clientele is Latino.

    Having been a practitioner in New Jersey and northern Manhattan, Dr. Bartky, who is fluent in Spanish, reports that the children he counsels on the East End report far greater degrees of trauma. Each year, from Hampton Bays to Montauk, Dr. Bartky conducts between 20 to 25 psychiatric evaluations for local school districts.

     “For the children, their journeys to the United States — especially if they’re undocumented — are filled with horror stories,” Dr. Bartky said. “It’s a journey filled with trauma, of learning a new language, of learning to fit in, and of oftentimes feeling less than.”

    Nothing in their prior work history had prepared Adam Fine and Maria Mondini, the principal and assistant principal of East Hampton High School, for David’s death in September. Although they have been school administrators for a combined total of more than a decade, having come to East Hampton from Southampton in 2010, they said his suicide shook them to the core.

     In the weeks following David’s death, Mr. Fine received as many as 30 e-mails a day from companies selling educational programs — on everything from anti-bullying to character education to suicide prevention. But rather than opt for a panacea, Mr. Fine decided to consider the problem more deeply.

    “We could do a Band-Aid program or we could take the pressure and weather the storm and do what’s right,” he said in a conversation late last month. Or, as Ms. Mondini put it: “Are we doing everything we possibly can to make sure this never happens again?”

    The hope of several school administrators and parents is that the recent suicides will precipitate real change by shining a light on troublesome corners of school life that may have been overlooked. Those interviewed by The Star said they were taking the long view of school change — one where the culture of East Hampton High School might be altered for the better three to five years down the line — rather than opting for a hurried and superficial overhaul.

    “We need people to open our eyes to all of the blind spots,” Ms. Mondini said, noting that all egos needed to be placed aside, whether those of administrators, parents, or students. “There are always blind spots but the question is: Are you willing to be shown them and then, once you have them, what are you willing to do with that information?”

    A concerted effort has begun to reach parents of Latino descent in the East Hampton community, where Spanish is increasingly the primary language spoken at home. According to the 2010-2011 New York State District Report Card, which is the most recent available, 38 percent of students in the East Hampton School District identified as either Latino or Hispanic.

    Following David’s suicide, the school convened a steering committee of students, parents, administrators, and clergy to tackle the question of how best to proceed. Ultimately, the committee decided on a school-wide survey — an anonymous, 20-minute questionnaire that addresses such topics as support, security, and diversity, among other factors. 

    The district also increased outreach to Spanish-speaking parents in other ways. In December the district hired Ana Núnez as its liaison to that community. A Columbia University alumna, Ms. Núnez graduated from East Hampton in 2007. She had arrived in East Hampton from Ecuador at the age of 9. The new position for the district pays an annual salary of $19,300 and is funded through a Title I grant.

    Since being hired, Ms. Núnez has convened a handful of meetings with Spanish-speaking parents at the high school. More than 100 parents turned out at a mid-February session, which offered complimentary child care by students in exchange for community service credits. Coming up on Feb. 28, Ms. Núnez will host a session for parents of children at John Marshall.

    Patricia Hope, a retired East Hampton High School teacher who is a member of the school board, is responsible for bringing Ms. Núnez to the attention of the district. Ms. Hope had taught Ms. Núnez science.

    Sitting in the Golden Pear in East Hampton near the end of last year, Ms. Hope recalled the “scales falling from her eyes” when she heard Ms. Núnez describe the dire need for increased outreach.

    “It opened my eyes to a situation that as a resident, as an educator, and as a board member I should have been more sensitive to all along — namely, the needs of any population, small or large, that does not speak the language,” Ms. Hope said. “I realize that we need to serve them in a more day-to-day, immediate fashion. We need to do a better job of reaching out.”

    Marcia Dias, a bilingual secretary in East Hampton High School’s main office, is a member of the steering committee. She said she has seen increased Latino parent turnout at meetings. Having them conducted entirely in Spanish, she said, has proved enormously helpful in helping to bridge the chasm.

     “One of the things parents would always tell me was that they wanted to go to the meetings but they couldn’t understand what was being said and they didn’t feel comfortable speaking up,” Ms. Dias said. “We’re now telling them that they can be part of this community and that we need their support in order to make the school better.”

    But David Kilmnick, chief executive officer of the Bay Shore-based Long Island Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Services Network, cautions against placing all the blame on the schools. Prior to committing suicide, David Hernandez had walked into a meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance at East Hampton High School. Mr. Kilmnick described East Hampton, when it comes to anti-bullying, as among the “most progressive and assertive on all of Long Island.”

     “School can have 100 workshops a day and 100 clubs but that’s not going to change the environment when the kids leave the school and they have to face bullying and homophobia in their churches and their local communities,” Mr. Kilmnick said. He is now trying to set up a community center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth “somewhere between Southampton and Bridgehampton.”

    Ms. Hellman, the nurse practitioner in the East End Pediatric Advocacy Workgroup, suggested the center be named for David Hernandez.

    As of yesterday morning, nearly all the staff members at East Hampton High had completed the steering committee’s survey, along with 14 percent of the high school’s parents. (The survey has been made available in Spanish as well as English.) Following next week’s winter recess, students will be asked to fill out the surveys during class time.    

    The National School Climate Center, an organization based in New York City that helps schools establish an environment of emotional well-being, is administering the survey. Included in the $3,000 cost, the center will compile the results and conduct a thorough analysis before presenting the findings to the committee in the spring. Depending on the outcome, the district will weigh whether or not to conduct a similar survey at East Hampton Middle School and John M. Marshall Elementary School next year.

    In a letter sent home to parents in early January, Mr. Fine said they would be invited to attend a community meeting to discuss the results once the report was received, which he hopes will be this spring. We “hope you will join us in this effort to make our school an even better place to learn,” he wrote.