Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls dance company will hold a mini workshop for girls 8 to 18 on Dec. 18 at the Hampton Ballet Theatre School in Bridgehampton.

    The workshop is for girls from all walks of life, and no dance experience is necessary. Combining journaling and storytelling with expressive movement, the four-hour workshop will culminate in a dance theater piece set to music and based on the participants’ personal experiences.

    The workshop costs $50. Preregistration, which is required, will be held from noon to 4 p.m. on Dec. 18. Ms. Mueth can be e-mailed for more information at [email protected].

Edible Schoolyard

    The Springs Seedlings Project will host the next meeting of the Edible School Garden on Wednesday at the Springs School. Founded by two of the school’s parents, Bryan Futerman of Foody’s restaurant in Water Mill and Joe Realmuto, the executive chef at Nick and Toni’s in East Hampton, who raised money to build a greenhouse and garden, the project is now open year round and has become a model for other edible schoolyard efforts.

    The meeting will take place in the school’s greenhouse from 4:30 to 6 p.m. It will include a tour of the Seedlings Project’s work.

    East Hampton High School’s interim superintendent, Richard Burns, and the school’s principal, Adam Fine, had hoped by holding a press conference Tuesday afternoon to pre-empt discussion at the school board meeting that night concerning a defaced boys soccer team photo in the locker room. It was discovered the morning of Nov. 7, a day in which the boys soccer and volleyball teams vied in playoff games here.

    But no sooner had the county-championship soccer team, which is largely Latino, filed out of the high school’s auditorium, after having received a standing ovation from the board meeting’s attendees, than all hell broke loose.

    For the better part of three hours, until 10:30, a debate involving parents, board members, and the school’s administrators raged. Administrators claimed they had been appropriately “proactive” in trying to ascertain the source of the defaced photo on which swastikas and genitalia had been drawn. Incensed parents of children who played on the boys volleyball team, whose practice followed the soccer team’s on Nov. 6, countered that the fact-finding forays — and a press release sent out earlier Tuesday saying the volleyball players were questioned — had effectively thrown their sons under the bus.

    “There were many, many other people in the building that day who could have committed the act,” said one of the incensed parents, Mary Lownes, maintaining that the administration still had no evidence that a boys volleyball player or players had been culpable.

    When told by the district’s athletic director, Joe Vas, that care had been used in questioning their sons and that the district guidelines for such incidents had been followed faithfully, Ms. Lownes and other parents, including Layla Bennett and Tiffany King, said that, to the contrary, their children had been “bullied” and “threatened” with the cancellation of their semifinal Division II playoff game that evening with Sayville should the offender or offenders not be produced.

    “During the course of their playoff game,” said Ms. Lownes, “it was confusing for those of us seated in the stands to understand why our boys were playing so inconsistently. They seemed visibly shaken, they were yelling at each other, which was so uncharacteristic of their play this season. It now becomes evident that the stress . . . put upon them by your administration and the pathetically bad officiating that evening put them over the edge.” Sayville bested the Bonackers in the encounter three games to one.

    The Tuesday press release said in part that “L.C. Nelson, the head custodian, confirmed that . . . all doors to the locker room [on Nov. 6] were locked except the door from the coaches’ office, and [that] no one other than the volleyball team could gain entry into the locker room.”

    In rebuttal, Ms. Lownes said that “another coach later discovered that a door that was thought to be locked leading to the locker room wasn’t locked . . . there was another way into the locker room not in the [security] camera viewing area.”

    “But by the time,” she continued, “this information was discovered, the damage had already been done: Our boys had been accused, interrogated, shamed, and put in a panic situation over the threat of not playing their playoff game that evening.”

    Virtually everyone in the audience agreed that to have drawn swastikas, universally abhorrent symbols of hate and mass murder, was a very serious offense.

    Laura Anker Grossman, the board’s chairwoman, said in this regard that the defacing (the investigation of which has been turned over to the East Hampton Town Police Department) could prove to be “a teaching moment” meriting a broader forum on the subject.

    But the furious parents, who had apparently not been notified of the inquiry nor been invited to participate in it, seemed of a mind that what Ms. Lownes had called a “witch hunt” ought to serve as a teaching point for the administration as well.

    “You didn’t do due diligence,” said Ms. Lownes. “We should have been called. You brought this on yourselves by accusing the volleyball players of committing a hate crime.”

    “The kids deserve an apology,” Ms. Bennett said before the meeting was adjourned.

With Reporting by Bridget LeRoy

    The Life Skills class at East Hampton High School meets in a large, bright classroom, complete with kitchen.

    It’s a good thing, too, since last week Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, visited the class and helped them cook blueberry muffins, brownies, and more.

    “We had a beautiful time with her,” said Denise Klein, the Life Skills instructor.

    Life Skills teaches academic classes in the morning and switches in the afternoon to instruct its six students, all with special needs, on the skills needed to live independently.

    Along with “travel time,” which fosters an ability to go from point A to point B, and jobs three days a week “to help get them employed after high school,” Ms. Klein offers cooking classes, which include a trip to King Kullen on Wednesdays to buy ingredients.

    “Something happens when they’re cooking,” she said. “All their disabilities and afflictions disappear.”

    Most of the recipes over the past year have been from one of Ms. Garten’s books, and when Ms. Klein sent a picture of the class and wrote to the East Hampton resident, she got an unexpected reply.

    Ms. Garten invited the class into her home last spring. Then, upon meeting the students, she invited the class to appear on her show, “The Barefoot Contessa,” which airs on the Food Network.

    The episode was filmed last week and will air in the spring.

    “They transformed the classroom in 45 minutes to a studio,” Ms. Klein said. “Ina helped the kids, guided them. She was so warm and wonderful.”

    Each student was designated a different station. Anthony was in charge of dough, Chevanne handled the wet ingredients, LeMy worked the mixers, Joe sifted the flour, and Jenny folded in the blueberries.

    Juan handled the money at the bake sale, which raised $131, with items priced at a dollar apiece, money that will be used to fund a trip to New York City, or maybe even Six Flags Great Adventure.

    At the end of it all, Ms. Garten bestowed a custom-embroidered apron on each of the kids.    

    “It was a great experience,” Ms. Klein said. “And the kids loved it.”

CMEE Fall Fest

    Saturday brings the first annual Fall Fest at the Children’s Museum of the East End.

    The event, a fund-raiser for the museum, will run from 2 to 4 p.m. Live performances and workshops, scavenger hunts, and snacks will dominate the afternoon, rain or shine.

    Tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door. Advance tickets can be bought at the museum or online at cmee.org. CMEE is on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike.

One-Acts at Ross

    “You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get!” a selection of 10 short one-act plays and a monologue, will be presented at the Ross School tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday starting at 7.

    Under the guidance of the Ross School’s theater director, Gerard Doyle, the plays are an eclectic mix, from the lighter to the darker ends of the comedy spectrum. Twenty-four students from both the middle and high school will perform the pieces. Family members and the public have been invited to attend. Tickets cost $15, or $10 for students and older people, and can be purchased at the door.

    Performances will be held at the Ross Court Theater at 18 Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton.

Hayground Open House

    The Hayground School in Bridgehampton, which educates children from ages 3 to 13, will hold an open house on Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. at its campus on Mitchell Lane.

    There will be tours, presentations, and an overview of the school’s programs followed by a question and answer session with Hayground teachers. Prospective parents and children will be welcomed.

Halloween Revue

    Stages, a Children’s Theater Workshop will present “Frankenstein Follies,” a Halloween-themed musical revue for families, at the Bay Street Theatre tomorrow through Sunday.

    The cast includes 39 young local performers. Showtimes will be at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

    Tickets cost $15 and include a carnival party following the show featuring face painting, a fake tattoo parlor, a creepy fortune teller, and a sweet treats bar.

Bash at CMEE

    The Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton will host a Halloween Bash tomorrow from 4 to 6 p.m. for kids 6 and under.

    There will be an indoor pumpkin patch bouncy castle, a glitter tattoo station, a mask-making workshop, scary stories, and treats for the kids, who are encouraged to go in costume. The party costs $17, but is free for members of the museum.

Calling All Ragamuffins!

    Costumed marchers will fill Main Street in Sag Harbor on Sunday during the annual Ragamuffin Parade. The parade will begin at 1 p.m. in the parking lot behind BookHampton and head down Main Street to the Custom House, whether there will be refreshments. The Whaling Museum, transformed into a “wailing museum” for Halloween, will be open for children’s tours later in the afternoon at a cost of $5.

    On Monday, kids can trick-or-treat along the “pumpkin trail,” on Main Street. An orange pumpkin face in a store window indicates that it is a participating business.

Open House

    The Ladies Village Improvement Society will host a Halloween party and open house for costumed kids on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. There will be candy treats and prizes, and the affair will be held rain or shine.

Boo, Too!

    Watch out for goblins on Saturday in Bridgehampton. The annual parade for children of the hamlet will start at the Hampton Library at 10:30 a.m. and proceed along Main Street. Parents have been asked to take only children who are 4 or older.

    Eric Casale, the Springs School principal, gave a presentation on Monday night on the new common-core learning standards being adopted in 48 of the 50 states, which will hold schools “to the same bar of accountability — teaching for mastery rather than just covering topics.”

    “There has been such an emphasis on reading and writing, we forgot about literacy, social studies, science, and more,” he said, referring to the education system as a whole.

    The importance in developing a consistent assessment system would show first in students  moving to new schools. “A student from Florida could go to Wyoming and would be held to the same standards,” Mr. Casale said. “There will be data systems to monitor growth, and principals and educators will be evaluated according to how students are performing.”

    These standards will not go fully into effect until 2014, but are beginning to be phased in even now. Luckily for Springs, said Mr. Casale, “we’re ahead of this process. The change for us will not be so drastic.”

    The principal acknowledged that he was “passionate about this” and looked forward to “ramping up expectations,” adding that new scoring systems will be “more rigorous. Right now students are graduating high schools after being told they were proficient since third grade, and then when they get to college, they are being told they’re remedial.”

    The new common-core learning standards are actually a return to old school, so to speak, the tenets of “reading to learn instead of learning to read,” said Mr. Casale, with a more philosophical approach to education.

    Part of the equation includes using a “staircase of complexity” to measure benchmarks along a student’s path of learning.

    In other news, the school received a petition with the required 55 names to add back a bus stop for students who live on certain portions of Sandra Road, Glade Road, and Woodbine Road. In a child safety zone study, the area had been judged less than a mile from the Springs School, and therefore ineligible for a bus stop. However, the school accepted the petition and has reinstated the stop.

    Lisa Matz, the president of the school’s parent teacher association, reminded the crowd that the next P.T.A. meeting would be held on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

    The Hayground School in Bridgehampton has announced the receipt of a $208,000 educational grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, a philanthropic foundation created by the estate of Leon Levy, co-founder of Oppenheimer and Company. It is the third grant Hayground has received from the foundation.

    “This is a very important year for the school,” it said in a statement. “As a result of the continued support of the Leon Levy Foundation, we will begin our endowment campaign. This is essential to maintain our mission of economic diversity.”

    “In the spring of 2012 we will complete the expansion of Jeff’s Kitchen, Hayground’s professional kitchen and community meeting space. With the support of the Leon Levy Foundation and plans donated by Deborah Burke, this expansion will allow us to increase classroom space for the school, accept more children in our camp program, have an expanded space for our growing Hayground Forum, and upgrade the kitchen equipment to highest health department standards, allowing us to rent the space to professional chefs and organizations. This is all part of our short and long-range goals to create a sustainable future for Hayground School and its organic gardens, farmers market, and camp.”

Tristan Vaughan and Morgan Duke Vaughan will begin a six-week course in Shakespeare at Guild Hall on Monday. The class is open to ages 16 and up, and will concentrate on sonnets, monologues, mask work, and scene work, culminating with a presentation in conjunction with the Naked Stage at the John Drew Theatre on Nov. 28. The classes will be held from 6 to 9 p.m., and cost $300, or $275 for Guild Hall members.

Morgan Vaughan was recently selected by the East End Arts Council as the new coordinator of the Teeny Awards, which honors local school productions with a red-carpet night reminiscent of the Tony Awards. In her new position, Ms. Vaughan plans to highlight past Teeny winners who have gone on to successful careers other than in the arts, showing the importance of drama programs in schools to help kids with confidence and team-playing.

    Kids having their lunch money taken is a well-worn cliché since time immemorial. But it’s not so often that it happens to a school.

    Whitsons Culinary Group, the food provider for East Hampton, Bridgehampton, East Quogue, and Hampton Bays schools, has to pay back $807,000 for “illegally overcharging” 30 school districts, according to New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman.

    That’s a lot of bologna sandwiches.

     According to a press release from Mr. Schneiderman’s office, “The Suffolk County-based Whitsons Culinary Group received savings from food vendors it worked with, but did not pass on those savings to customer schools, resulting in more than $800,000 in illegal charges. Whitsons must now pay $1.6 million to the state and affected school districts, and comply with a series of reforms to improve transparency in its contracting and service.”

    The Whitsons case was pursued under the New York False Claims Act. The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act allows the state to collect triple damages from corporations or people who defraud the government, or violate their obligations to pay government entities or, in this case, school districts.

    Richard Burns, interim superintendent of the East Hampton Union Free School District, said that the total refund due to East Hampton is around $3,900. The money will be allocated to the school’s cafeteria fund to help pay for any future shortages.

    Seventy-five dollars will be coming back to Bridgehampton, and East Quogue will get a check for $5. Hampton Bays will not receive a refund as it was not included in the settlement.

    The school districts range from Long Island to Manhattan to Ulster County, with the bulk of them in Westchester, where 13 districts were affected.

    Holly Von Seggern of Whitsons, which is based in Islandia, said the overcharges were unintentional. She pointed to a confusing law put into effect in 2003, governing the allocation of rebates, “but it was not clarified and adopted by the [United States Department of Agriculture] until late 2007, when it became federal law.” The refunds are coming from that four-year period.” Whitsons revisited its rebate accounting procedures in 2007, when the law was clarified,” she said in a statement.

    “Whitsons remains committed to ethical business practices and maintains strong partnerships with its clients. The company is proud of its reputation for integrity, high quality, and excellent service and continues to lead the industry with its innovative programs and strong focus on nutrition and education.”

    Whitsons is not alone. Last year the international food provider Sodexo paid back $20 million to the New York Attorney General’s office to resolve an investigation into its rebate practices.

Harvest Festival at Ross

    On Sunday, the Ross School will host its annual harvest festival at the Center for Well-Being on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton.

    Offering an indoor farmers market featuring produce and organic products from local purveyors, live music by Caroline Doctorow and Job Potter, with food, games, and more, the family festival is free and will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

    Prior to the fun and games, there will be an admissions information session at 10 a.m. for parents interested in sending their children to the school. Reservations with the school have been requested for this session.

Find Your Inner Buccaneer

    David Engel’s Pirate School — which has been featured in New York magazine’s “Best of New York: Kids,” and has performed extensively around the world — will drop anchor at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton on Sunday as the museum hosts a Family Pirate festival from 1 to 4 p.m.

    Touted as a “one-man seafaring vaudeville that spoofs the Golden Age of Sail,” David Engel will follow the 1 p.m. performance with an “academy” where eager pirates-in-training can learn the fine and ferocious pirate arts of swashbuckling and gathering doubloons, and engage in art activities, face painting, and more.

    Admission is free and no advance registration is required. The pirate festival will take place rain or shine.