At the East Hampton School Board meeting on Sept. 20, Kevin Seaman, the new attorney for the district, gave a quick surmise as to where the district stands in the long-running and money-consuming legal battle with Sandpebble Builders.

    The firm initially sued the district, after its construction contract was canceled in favor of another builder, for $3.75 million. Over the past four years, both sides have fired accusations back and forth, and the attorneys’ bills have climbed. At last count, the district had spent more than $2.3 million on the case.

    “But there’s one very significant question,” Mr. Seaman said, returning to a point that may have been initially overlooked. “Did Sandpebble file a notice of claim within the required three-month period? Did they bring a timely action?”

    The Melville law firm of Pinks, Arbeit & Nemeth has replaced the firm previously employed to handle the lawsuit, which is now scheduled to be heard by an appellate court in Brooklyn at 10 a.m. on Oct. 17.

    “The court will see if the [Sandpebble’s] motion can be reversed. If not, Sandpebble wins,” Mr. Seaman said.

    “The court will have to determine when the starting date actually was,” he continued. “Was it when they [Sandpebble] knew they wouldn’t be paid, or when they were formally terminated?”

    “If they lose this case, they’re going to have a tough time proceeding with the claim,” he said.

    In a different but related matter, Mike Guido, the architect, is expected to attend the board meeting on Tuesday to discuss what has and has not been finished at the schools. That meeting will take place at the district office at 7:30 p.m.

    “So the players are all going to sit down at a table and work it out until it’s finished, so we can close the bond issue?” asked Patricia Hope, a school board member.

    Mr. Seaman assured Ms. Hope that that was the intention.

Family Nature Movies

    On Saturday at 7 p.m., the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton will present the first in a series of family nature movies.

    “Winged Migration,” a film that follows a variety of birds across 40 countries and seven continents, was called “a movie miracle” by Rolling Stone magazine. Tickets are $7 for adults, $5 for children, and free for members of the museum.

    The museum is on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike.

Pizza and Politics

    New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Bonnie Cannon, executive director of the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center, will help introduce kids in 6th through 12th grades to some of the ins and outs of politics on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton.

    There will be pizza to eat while kids chew over the big issues.

Award-winning classical music students from high school and college programs will share their talents in a concert at the Bay Street Theatre on Sunday to benefit the Katy’s Courage Fund.

This is the sixth year that young local musicians have joined together to celebrate Katy Stewart of Sag Harbor, who died at the age of 12 of a rare form of liver cancer, and to raise money for the nonprofit established in her memory to support scholarships, counseling, and pediatric cancer research.

Ten musicians will perform — seven from local high schools and three from the South Fork who are studying music at the college level. Ellen Johansen and Alvin Novak, local professional musicians, will accompany them.

Participating from East Hampton High School will be Leo Panish on violin and Georgia Bennett, a singer. Tristan Griffin, a Ross School eighth grader, will play piano. Joining them will be Emmanuelle Bernard and Christopher Ritter from Pierson High School on piano and, from Southampton High School, Benjamin Pereira on violin and Kivlan King on cello.

Matthew Maimone, who is studying piano at the Juilliard School, Maxfield Panish, a violin student at the Manhattan School of Music, and Christopher Beroes-Haigis, who studies cello at Bard College, will also perform.

The concert starts at 4 p.m. There is a suggested donation of $10 for tickets.

    Differences of opinion were predominant about having 94 kindergartners in the gym at one time when the Springs School Board met on Monday for the first time since school opened.

    Mark McKee, who recently retired as the school’s athletic director but is continuing on as a physical education teacher, started the discussion off. “I’m very upset about the sizes of the phys- ed classes,” he told the board. “I’ve been here 26 years, and they are larger than they have been in any year.”

    Because of scheduling changes and the reduction of one physical education teacher, the kindergarten classes,  totaling 94 children, take gym at the same time.

    “I don’t think 90 kids in a gym class is safe,” Mr. McKee said. “And I don’t think it’s productive. It’s not educationally sound. Please look into changing the class sizes.”

    “This is a discussion for the athletic department and the administration,” Kathee Burke Gonzalez, the school board president, said. “It’s too early to bring it before the board.” Saying “this is day four,” she suggested that there were bound to be creative changes to assigned class sizes.

    But Michael Hartner, the district superintendent, wasn’t ready to find fault. “With those 90 kids,” Mr. Hartner said, “there are six adults. That’s 15 kids to one adult. Anywhere else in the country, that would be considered a reasonable and rich ratio.” He added that such decisions were not surprises since they had been discussed during budget workshops in the spring.

    “It’s just too early to make changes,” he said. “We have to make decisions that best benefit the district, not to benefit a particular department.”

    Mr. McKee was not mollified. “It’s 15 to 1,” he said. “But there’s only one instructor. The rest are teaching assistants.”

    Mr. Hartner stood his ground. He had observed the kindergarten gym class, he said. “With tiny 5 and 6-year-olds in a space this big, my initial reaction was that not all the classes were here.” There are four kindergarten sections. “But,” he added, “90 is a big number.”

    “And 75 in the first grade,” said Mr. McKee. Although he said he was still frustrated, he was encouraged by the feedback. “Hopefully we can come up with some solutions.”

    Michelle Grant, a school parent, was still concerned. “It’s not just a matter of space,” she said. “How can an instructor get to know the students well enough to recognize which kids may need extra physical help? This sounds so unsafe and unproductive for the kids. I wish you would reconsider this. They could be the greatest coaches in the world, but 90 kids in a gym at the same time — it just sounds unsafe.”

    Mr. Hartner compared the class size to indoor recess, which is also held in the gym. “You can have 150 to 170 kids in here all together. With four trained bus drivers. It works both space-wise and it’s safe,” he said.

    “Well, what determines if it’s not working,” Ms. Grant asked. “An injury?”

    Tracey Frazier, a teacher, parent, and the wife of Tim Frazier, a school board member, who had said earlier that the issue was about space rather than staffing, spoke again. “Gym is not recess, Recess is social. Gym is instructional,” she said.

    John Foster, who was a gym teacher last year and is now teaching family and consumer science and a health class, thought the matter was of “absolute concern. It’s a no-brainer. There are three classes when the gym is empty. Why not break up those classes?”

    When reached for comment the next day, Mr. Hartner said there was no safety issue. “The staff is deployed in a manner which we think is best for the district — to get the most out of their skills — so we have to give it every opportunity to work, instead of giving it up after a couple of classes.”

    When Eric Casale, the school principal, told the board about new courses for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students, the kindergarten gym class also came up.

    Mr. Casale said those grades were now offered double periods in visual arts and music, a studio art class had been added for grades seven and eight, along with English language arts through film, and a course in contemporary law and public speaking for eighth graders.

    Mary Jane Arceri, a special education teacher, had the final word on the subject. “I heard additional art, film classes, the addition of a FACS [family and consumer science] class, law, all for the older students,” she said. “And I hear 94 kindergartners in a gym class. There seems to be a little bit of an unbalance here.”

    “I love that we are doing this for the junior high, but I feel like the younger grades are being shortchanged,” she said.

    In other changes this year, two kindergarten classes are being held in the Springs Youth Association building, with 692 students compared to 682 last year.

    “There are more students in first grade, but fewer in the other grades,” Ms. Burke Gonzalez said.

    There have also been changes to the vehicle traffic patterns around the school, and the gym and library have new roofs.

    An East Hampton School Board work session on Tuesday evening focused on goals and objectives for the coming year, both for the board and for Richard Burns, the interim superintendent, along with finer points to aid in evaluating a superintendent’s abilities.

    “The goals before were so broad,” said Laura Anker Grossman, the board president. “We need to set priorities and then talk about how to accomplish them.”

    George Aman, a board member, agreed. “One thing that was missing last year was specificity. We, as a board, have to learn to establish goals.”

    Dr. Aman had drawn up a draft of what some of the goals might be. One was a complete review and acceptance of the district’s policy book by Jan. 1. “It’s some five years out of date,” he said. “We can’t keep going without policies in place.”

    Kerri Stevens, the district clerk, said there was already some progress on that, since two interns had worked on it all summer. “You should get it tomorrow,” she said, “and you’ll be able to compare the two side by side and easily see what’s missing.”

    One of the duties of the superintendent — interim or not — should be “to prepare and present a curriculum evaluation every month, with relative weaknesses and how we can improve them,” according to Dr. Aman.

    “We need to diagnose and target weaknesses, instead of boasting about our strengths,” he said.

    He went on, and the board agreed, that there should be a topical sum-up at least once a month, focusing on continuing issues, like the Sandpebble lawsuit.

    “We bring up topics at an open meeting, and then the public never hears about them again,” Dr. Aman said. “It makes it seem like we’re hiding something. We have to be transparent.”

    Besides the lawsuit, Dr. Aman brought up the consolidation study. “We okayed $40,000 for a consolidation study, we should let the public know where we are on that.”

    Kathee Burke Gonzalez, the school board president in Springs, and Dr. Grossman had a brief meeting on the subject of consolidation and/or shared services last week, and the presidents and vice-presidents of both boards will meet on Monday at 4 p.m., joined by board members of all of the other sending districts at 5.

    “The only way to be transparent is to continually discuss these issues,” Alison Anderson, a board member, said.

    Mr. Burns brought up shared services, using the example of the $80,000-$120,000 each that the district spends on sending several autistic students to Bellport for school.

    “If we brought them here, with Springs, Montauk, Amagansett, and other districts, and set something up in the alternative school, it could translate as significant savings for all of us,” he said.

    The board attempted to divide the superintendent evaluation goals under several headings: board relations, oversight of policy and procedures, instruction and student achievement, community relations, budget and finance management, and personnel and professional development. Something like shared services would be classified under finance management, while briefing the public about ongoing issues would be community relations.

    The board also discussed preparing for the 2-percent tax cap, upcoming negotiations with personnel, and arranging a program with the New York State School Boards Association to be held in East Hampton with tips on school board functionality and goal planning.

Thespian Alert

    Stages, A Children’s Theatre Workshop, will hold a fall performance workshop for actors ages 8 to 18 starting on Monday.

    The program, which costs $450, will run for six weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the Southampton Town Recreation Center, and culminate with three performances of “Frankenstein Follies” at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, just in time for Halloween. Not all actors will have to show up for all rehearsals.

    For younger but “mature” actors ages 6 to 9, an eight-week creative drama program will take place on Tuesdays, starting this Tuesday, at a cost of $275. It will be held at Bay Street. Helene Leonard, co-founder of Stages, will direct the programs. Parents of budding thespians can email [email protected]  for more information.

After-School Workshops

    The Ross School is offering a selection of after-school workshops and classes for students ages 5 and up this fall. Students can sign up for dance, farm animal care, athletics, ceramics, painting and drawing, rock band, robotics, theater arts, and more.  Classes will begin on Monday. Most run once a week until mid-December, and cost in the $250 to $325 range.

    Mariah Bruehl, the owner of Playful Learning behind Main Street in Sag Harbor, was at odds with herself a few years ago. She had two young daughters and was also the associate director of the Ross Lower School, and felt that something had to give.

    “I stopped working,” she said. “I loved my job, so the transition was tougher than I thought.” She stayed at home to raise her daughters, Marilyn and Ella, who are 18 months apart and are currently 8 and 6, respectively.

    Her husband, Ed Bruehl, works in real estate, and is also one of the founders of the Sag Harbor Elementary School’s Eco-Walk project, which he helped to create with Sam Panton of Terra Design and Playful Gardens, an office that abuts Mrs. Bruehl’s store and offers landscape design geared toward the younger set.

    To keep herself occupied and “keep my foot in the real world,” Mrs. Bruehl started a Web site and blog about parent-and-child activities.

    The Web site developed a loyal following, as Mrs. Bruehl offered not only ideas for educational fun, but also ways of organizing what she calls “playful learning spaces” for children, and many other useful hints she had picked up in her years of teaching, both at Ross and at the Dalton School in New York City.

    “Curriculum development was one of my true loves, and something I could do at home with the girls. I had almost every book written about it, so I just used what I knew to engage in interesting projects and share with other parents.”

    “For the longest time, I felt like I was just writing to myself,” she said. But suddenly, three events happened almost simultaneously in the spring of 2010 that made it clear she wasn’t.

    Mrs. Bruehl’s Web site, playfulearning.com, won a Parents’ Choice Gold Award, with a review that stated, “When first visiting Playful Learning, it appears to be a simple, homemade Web site with some ideas for doing things with your kids. However, it quickly becomes clear that this soft-spoken, beautifully designed site is a tantalizing resource loaded with truly fun ideas for teaching young children about math, science, writing, and more.”

    Then she had a “scream-out-loud moment” when a visitor to her site turned out to be an editor for Shambhala Publications, which focuses on books about mindful awareness.

    The resulting book, “Playful Learning,” was published last month. “Each activity in the book is something I have actually done with my girls. We’ve done them together and know that they’re fun.”

    In June of 2010, Mrs. Bruehl opened the space in Sag Harbor. “I was feeling a little isolated,” she said. “I missed the classroom.” Almost immediately the store was a success, with loyal, “lovely customers,” said Mrs. Bruehl.

    The cozy space is filled with educational toys and games, and also sports a back room where Mrs. Bruehl holds workshops. She offers a series of “learning experiences” — from making a birdhouse to painting a custom set of Russian dolls — which parents and children can do in a back room any time the shop is open.

    Mrs. Bruehl’s online store features a botanist’s kit, sewing kit, a writing caddy, and other items kids, and parents, would enjoy, plus a big-ticket writing center, custom made and priced at $372, which includes everything to create an organized hub for a child of any age to write letters, stories, and essays. It also offers ideas on creating a birdwatching station, an art atelier, and other nooks and crannies designed to inspire.

    This summer, Mrs. Bruehl offered an e-course for kids ages 6 to 12 called Through the Lens: Explorations in Photo Journaling, which lasted four weeks and had 60 participants. “Kids posted their work, and could record their voices and opinions on each other’s work,” she said.

    Her new six-week e-course, Playful Learning Spaces, which begins Wednesday, is geared toward parents and teachers who want to design “thoughtful spaces for children,” an a propos subject as school begins and papers get strewn throughout the house. Those interested can find details on Mrs. Bruehl’s Web site. The cost of the course is $125.

    “I’ve seen firsthand, in schools and at home, the power that a child has creating when the space is clear and organized,” she said.

Snapper Derby Sunday

    Kids of all ages have been invited to dip their lines in a snapper derby on Sunday at Harbor Marina, which is just off Gann Road on Three Mile Harbor. Registration is at 10 a.m. with a free lure for the first 30 entrants. The weigh-in starts at 2 p.m. with prizes, games, fish prints, and photos of the winning and not-so-winning catches available. Competition is divided by age group, with the over-15 category open to adults as well as teens. Questions can be directed to the staff at the Harbor Marina.

Music, Music, Music

    The Ellen Johansen Music Studio on Stratton Square in East Hampton is beginning a new round of music classes this month for children from newborns to age 4, accompanied by their parents. Drop-in classes are available throughout the month, with a reservation.

    A family music class for babies up to 15 months old is offered on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. The cost is $235 for 15 classes or $20 to drop in. Family music for toddlers 15 months to 3 years old is given on Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. for $250 for a 15-class session, or $20 for a single class. Cycle of Seasons, a class for 3 and 4-year-olds, will be given Wednesdays at 3 p.m. The cost is $275 for 15 classes or $25 for drop-ins.

    Ms. Johansen’s studio has provided music classes and piano lessons for children and their families for more than 20 years. More information can be found at ellenjohansenmusicstudio.com.

For Young Dancers

    Dancehampton, which has a new studio at 15 Lumber Lane in East Hampton, is registering students for its fall dance classes today from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The studio offers ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, and Irish step-dance classes, as well as classes in musical theater and acrobatics for all ages from toddlers to adults. Classes cost $15 each or $130 for a package of 10.

    Dancehampton is also forming junior and senior dance companies. Select dancers 7 and older will be invited to audition for the companies. Members, who are required to take three classes per week, will perform at events in the area and participate in dance competitions here.

    Classes will begin the week of Sept. 19. A full schedule can be found on the studio’s Web site, dancehampton.com.

    It is almost beyond belief that because of known water-quality issues as long ago as 2005 the Town of East Hampton stopped posting lifeguards at a Lake Montauk beach popular with the parents of young children, but continued to tacitly allow swimming there. Although signs are posted declaring swimming prohibited, they are generally ignored.  

    South Lake had been closed to bathing on and off since at least the mid-1980s, but after 2005, when lifeguards were no longer assigned there, the Suffolk Department of Health discontinued regular water testing. Nevertheless, the town irresponsibly continued to allow access, with a residents-only parking lot.

    Underscoring the concern, the state has for some time prohibited shellfishing in the south part of the lake from April to December because of pollution. Water-quality standards for shellfishing and swimming differ, so a seasonal shellfish closure does not automatically signify a health risk. In the absence of testing, however, the public cannot be assured. Is it or isn’t it a good place for a dip? The official signal has been mixed.

    Another area popular with swimmers that is also seasonally closed to shellfishing is in Accabonac Harbor south of Wood Tick Island. A calm cove on the Louse Point side, it is especially popular with people who like easy, refreshing laps. Is it safe to swim there, despite the shellfish ban? Nobody knows. And East Hampton is not alone in this; Sag Harbor Village has long failed to give notice to swimmers about results from testing that showed traces of human waste at Havens Beach, nor has it moved forward fast enough with remediation proposals.

    The reason for the concern at South Lake, and perhaps at Accabonac, is that because the county does not do regular testing, no one has been able to say for sure if swimming is a human health risk. Fortunately, testing was to have been done by the county this week at the request of Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. It is the only recent testing at South Lake Beach that anyone appears to know about. The town board is to consider what to do pending the results.

    Odds are that the tests will show contamination of one form or another with a finding of human fecal waste likely, according to a former Suffolk Department of Health official. If this comes to pass, the town must explicitly and adequately alert the public. And, if access is to remain in place, the town should conduct its own regular testing.

    According to the experts at Tuesday night’s East Hampton school board meeting, it’s going to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $100,000 to replace the ceilings in five classrooms and another small room at the middle school, where more problems came to light, literally, as ceiling tiles came crashing down during a mid-July weekend brownout.

    Brendan Broderick of the environmental firm J.C. Broderick and Associates explained to the board that heat and humidity caused some tiles affixed to the plaster by “glue dollops,” which contain asbestos, to loosen. They landed on the suspended ceiling, causing those tiles to fall as well.

    “All air samples came back clean,” said Mike Guido, the middle school architect, who spoke with Mr. Broderick. “The only thing hot is the glue, but it is not friable and does not readily come out.” Mr. Guido heads his own firm.

    Since the glue dollops contain asbestos, by law they have to be handled by a certified asbestos removal company, and that puts the cost of replacing the ceiling in those six rooms at approximately $71,000, with additional expected necessary work bringing the total to “just under $100,000,” said Eric Woellhof, the plant facilities administrator.

    The work would be performed by Branch Services - D.K.I., which offered the lowest bid to the board through the Board of Cooperative Education Services.

    “This would come out of the $320,000?” Alison Anderson, a board member, asked Isabel Madison, the district’s business administrator, referring to the reserve fund. Ms. Madison concurred, noting that an additional $650,000, part of the budget vote in May, would remain in the reserve.

    Also at the meeting, the board discussed a ceiling of another kind, the abolishment of the position of head clerk when Geri Fromm retires in mid-September. If that happens, then, for the time being, the highest position in the district would be principal clerk.

    The board reluctantly agreed to approve the superintendent’s recommendation. Initially, both Patricia Hope and Alison Anderson were opposed to the motion, “out of respect for the position,” said Ms. Anderson. Ms. Hope agreed. “It’s not a lot of bucks we’re talking about,” she said of the salary differential between principal clerk and head clerk.

    “Adam [Fine, the high school principal] has faith in this decision, we should respect it,” said Jacqueline Lowey, a board member. George Aman agreed. “This is a case of micromanagement,” he said. “This is a reasonable recommendation, it’s not gross mismanagement.”

    It was explained that keeping the civil service denomination of principal clerk while jettisoning head clerk would allow the board to hire from within the district, since there is currently no one locally who would be able to step into Ms. Fromm’s position. And, the board agreed, time is of the essence, so that Ms. Fromm can lead someone new through his or her paces before she retires on Sept. 19.

    “I know there are some bad feelings among the staff about this,” said Ms. Anderson, but she and Ms. Hope changed their votes after hearing that the job of principal clerk would allow them to “hire from inside,” said Kerri Stevens, the district clerk.