The Sag Harbor School District will offer a tuition-free prekindergarten program to all district residents beginning in September. The program is under the auspices of SCOPE Education Services, a provider of early childhood programs on Long Island.

The pre-K program will feature a developmental curriculum geared to 4-year-olds to encourage creativity and social skills.

The program will be offered in morning and afternoon sessions at Pierson Middle School, five days a week. To be eligible, children must turn 4 by Dec. 1, 2011. Applications can be picked up at the Sag Harbor Elementary School’s main office, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

    I-Tri, a Springs organization that offers “transformation through triathlon for at-risk adolescent girls,” recently received a $10,000 grant from the Simple Works Foundation of East Hampton.

    The grant provides equipment and training for 23 young women (ages 11 through 15) from the Springs School who are enrolled in the program and in training for the Maidstone Park Youth Triathlon on July 24. The money will also enable I-Tri to pursue plans to take the program to other school districts in 2012.

    Through the sport of triathloning, a curriculum of physical fitness and nutrition activities, and self-affirming lessons of respect, responsibility, teamwork, and dedication, I-Tri helps participants develop healthy habits and attitudes. The group’s executive director, Theresa Roden, writes a blog where more information about the girls’ goings-on can be found: i-tri-girls.blogspot.com.

    Simple Works, a nonprofit corporation established in 2007, funds smaller, established, high-impact, and easily monitored projects with definable goals aimed at the health, wellness, and education of children.

    Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, sent a message to parents yesterday regarding a letter he had received from Whitsons, the school’s catering company, stating that a “foreign object” had been found “in an individual half-pint carton of OakTree lemonade with the expiration date of June 21, 2011.”

    Upon receiving news of the issue, the school took all of the Oak Tree products that fit the description off its shelves, and Oak Tree put “all juice and drink products from this manufacturer with this specific expiration date, on hold as a precautionary measure.”

    “Foreign object” may sound intriguing, but when contacted, Charlene Cosman, the chief financial officer of Oak Tree Dairy in East Northport, said it was not as serious as it sounds.

    “We received a product complaint about a foreign particle in a lemonade container on June 2 and immediately sent our quality control inspector to the location,” she said. “Upon preliminary examination, it appeared that the foreign particle was a scorched fragment of paper which may have been a result of a container being in contact with a heating element during the packaging process.” Although the inspector has sent the particle to a lab for further examination, there is no product recall at this time. 

    A few outside, alternative revenue streams were discussed, with some opposition, at the Tuesday night meeting of the East Hampton School Board: selling advertising banners to be displayed at youth football games, and permitting the use of the high school’s parking lot to accommodate cars belonging to attendees of the MTK: Music To Know festival, which is to be staged at the East Hampton Airport in August.

    Gary Stanis, a coach for the Police Athletic League’s East Hampton youth football team, held up a mock-up two-sided plastic banner so the board could see.

    “They cost us $100 to make up,” he said. The plan would be to get local businesses to become sponsors, paying $750 for the banner; they would be on display on the football field for the fall season only. The soft plastic banners are easy to take down and re-use, Mr. Stanis said.

    Mr. Stanis estimated that there would be room for approximately 40 banners on the East Hampton High School football field, taking into account breaks in the fence surrounding it (and leaving the sides facing the school open). The money raised, he said, would be split 50-50 between the league and the school district.

    “This goes straight to the kids,” he said in a follow-up interview on Wednesday. “It’s not funding anybody’s trip to Puerto Rico or anything. It’s an alternative to going to the taxpayer, who has had it up to here by now. And it offers the merchants something for their dollar.”

    However, Stephen Talmage, a board member, expressed deep concern over potential advertising on the field. “These are private companies advertising on public property,” he said. “These are billboards, which are illegal in the town. I think we’re crossing a line here.”

    “We have to be more creative,” responded Alison Anderson, another board member. “Times are hard right now, and I thank Gary for his initiative.”

    Mr. Talmage held his stance with a smile. “It’s not that I have anything against youth football,” he said. “It’s not part of our job as a board of education to sell billboards on public property.”

    “It’s a fund-raiser,” said John Ryan Sr., a board member, who held a school yearbook up in the air. “This is a fund-raiser too.”

    “I’m going to vote no,” said Mr. Talmage.

    Lauren Dempsey, another board member, also expressed doubt, saying the banners would open the door to other teams wanting the same opportunity.

    “The baseball team is already interested for the spring,” said Joe Vas, the district’s athletic director.

    “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Mrs. Dempsey.

    “It’s two different seasons,” offered Patricia Stanis, a parent of a high school student and Mr. Stanis’s wife, from the audience.

    Laura Anker Grossman, a board member, pointed out that the school already engages in advertising sales on a smaller scale with its beverage and vending machines: Companies are allowed to put their products in the school and split the money with the district.

    “This is more community oriented,” said Mr. Stanis. “No Coca-Cola, just local businesses.”

    But which businesses might advertise gave the board pause, as well.

    “We’re not going to accept an ad that says, ‘Happy hour at 4!’ ” Mr. Stanis said.

    Although Mr. Talmage voted no, the board approved the measure, but with a codicil: Mr. Vas and Mr. Stanis were charged with setting  guidelines for the ads in the next two weeks.

    Music To Know, the two-day concert coming to the East Hampton Airport on Aug. 13 and 14, had made a presentation to the school board several months ago, requesting use of the high school parking lot and offering money in exchange. The donation offer has now been solidified as “a minimum of $10,000 to Project MOST and a minimum of $10,000 to the district” for the use of the parking privilege, according to MTK.

    Dr. Anker Grossman wanted clarification from the school’s superintendent, Raymond Gualtieri, on whether this would affect the sum that Project MOST is slated to receive from East Hampton Town. “Project MOST has a $140,000 shortfall since the state got rid of advanced grants,” she said. She hoped funds from MTK wouldn’t sway East Hampton Town to give Project MOST less.

    Mrs. Anderson also wanted Dr. Gualtieri to clarify how much money could potentially be brought in, if $20,000 was only a minimum.

    “They’re saying it’s $20,000 even if we only have three cars here,” she said. “What if we have a full parking lot?”

    A discussion about having high school students involved, either in the parking lot or in a boardroom, using the parking lot as a business model, was quickly quashed by Patricia Hope, an incoming board member.

    “This is a concert that has a lot of young people excited, and that’s great,” said Ms. Hope. “But there’s going to be drinking and drugs and who knows. There can’t be any kids involved. No kids,” she said again, emphatically, to murmurs of agreement from both the crowd and the board.

    Dr. Gualtieri was directed to investigate these further details and report back to the board in two weeks.

    Alison Anderson asked Eric Woellhof, the district’s director of facilities, about a Long Island Power Authority initiative rewarding energy efficiency that could net the recently renovated school between $500,000 and $1 million in energy rebates.

    “That’s if it had been done on time,” Ms. Anderson said, referring to the application for the rebates. “Is the architect responsible, since they didn’t file it on time? I don’t think the taxpayer should foot the bill.”

    “What has gone into this building is above anything they have seen,” answered Mr. Woellhof. “We’ve been cited as an example. We should be their poster child,” he said of the energy-saving and sustainability practices that the school district is engaged in. “We will know what the difference is when we speak to LIPA.”

    “But is it in the contract with the architect to file for these?” queried Mrs. Anderson.

    “These rebates were not available when the project started six years ago,” said Mr. Woellhof, who said he would look into the matter further.

    David Swickard, a history teacher at East Hampton High School, has been awarded his sixth National Endowment for the Humanities summer research grant. A teacher of advanced placement European and world history and an elective on history through film, Dr. Swickard will take part in a four-week seminar on existentialist philosophers at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

    The seminar will be led by Professor Thomas Wartenberg, who teaches courses in modern Western philosophy and has written widely on the philosophy of film as well as existentialist thought.

    The purpose of the grant program is to support seminars and institutes at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions, so that teachers can study with experts. These opportunities for high school teachers to pursue scholarly interests are aimed at enriching their classroom teaching and reinforcing the commitment to learning that motivated them to become teachers in the first place.

    Dr. Swickard’s interest in the seminar was motivated by a demand from his students to develop another film course not limited to history. In his grant application, he said that the seminar might allow him to develop a new course, philosophy and film, focusing not just on the philosophy of film but on how students might use the tools of philosophy to analyze the choices made by the characters in films.

    This might prove to be a comfortable way for students to discuss real-life applications of what otherwise might seem to be abstract theoretical principles, Dr. Swickard said.

    Dr. Swickard won grants to study the ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx at the University of Southern California in 1993, ancient Greek religion and art at the University of California Los Angeles and the Getty Museum in 1995, biographies of Saint Francis in Assisi and Siena, Italy, in 2001, Mozart’s operas in Vienna, Austria in 2003, and Bach’s musical theology in Eisenach and Leipzig, Germany last year.

    Dr. Swickard received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Before his 20-year tenure at East Hampton High School, he was the executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society for five years. From 1984 to 2004 he

was a classical music critic for The East Hampton Star.

Calling Young Farmers!

    This summer Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz, a Slow Food leader, will be working with the Bridgehampton Young Farmers Initiative in a summer program for 4th through 10th graders at the Bridgehampton School.

    Students will learn about the art, science, and business of farming and agriculture production in an intimate setting on a school farm in Bridgehampton.

    Only 20 spots are available. The program will be offered weekdays from 8 a.m. to noon from July 11 through Aug. 5. Fees are $150 per week for each two-week session or $500 for two complete sessions. The program is free for Bridgehampton residents.    

    Students can register by calling the school or online at bridgehampton.k12. ny.us.

For Young Writers

    The Southampton Writers Conference at Stony Brook Southampton’s campus will offer writing workshops for teens under the auspices of its Young American Writers Project.

    The summer workshops pair professional writers with high school students for retreats, lasting four or five days, in scriptwriting and creative writing. Both workshops culminate in final readings, and select pieces of student work may be eligible for publication in the Y.A.W.P. e-zine.

    The creative writing workshop runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., July 5 through July 8. Student writers in fiction, poetry, and essays will discover new ways to explore their ideas and have them heard. By the end of the workshop, students will have several pieces of completed work to submit or publish. On the final day, they will participate in a reading of their work at the 2011 Summer Writing Conference. The course fee is $525.

    The scriptwriting workshop runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. starting July 11. The workshop will include five days of concentrated writing, during which each student will write a short, two-character script for stage or screen. The final day will be devoted to a rehearsed reading of students’ work at the 2011 Summer Writing Conference. The course fee for the scriptwriting workshop is $575.

    Partial scholarships are still available, and the deadline for applications is tomorrow. Details can be found at stonybrook.edu/yawp.

    The Montauk School Board on Tuesday had several visitors make video presentations. At the start of the meeting board members watched a DVD of the fifth-and-sixth-grade chorus singing the national anthem at a Mets game at Citi Field on June 2.

    The students performed a sound check and then headed underground where the players usually run through a passageway to the field. After they performed on the field in front of the crowd, the students met Mr. Met, the team mascot, who climbed into the stands to congratulate them. Their performance was shown on a giant screen with the words “Montauk School” below them.

    Jack Perna, the district superintendent, thanked Steven Skoldberg, the music teacher, and Rick White, the computer resource teacher, and said, “What a proud moment.”

    Also making a presentation was Theresa Roden, the founder and executive director of i-tri, a self-esteem program for girls that has already started successfully in the Springs School. She was joined by Sharon McCobb, a fitness training coordinator.

    The program was created for girls who consider themselves nonathletes, and it helps them develop a strong fitness base. It ends with them participating in a local triathlon. In training, which is voluntary, it aims to build self-respect, personal empowerment, confidence, and a positive body image. It encourages a healthier lifestyle and fitness through better eating habits and yoga and other forms of exercise.

    For girls in grades six to eight, the program meets on school days during lunch hour or recess. On days off and during the summer the girls meet whenever they can get together. Several students who had been through the program were with the founder and said i-tri makes those taking part more like family than friends. One of them, Abby Roden, said it gives girls something to do in summer. “We live near all these beaches and we should be using them,” she said.

    The program is grant-funded except for the cost of transportation for training at such places as the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.

    School board members said they liked the program but weren’t sure if it would work in Montauk, since there are about 45 girls in those grades and most of them take part in sports. They said they would discuss it further.

    The board heard Tuesday from Wendy Arias, Erin White, and Gianna Gregorio, fifth graders who reported on how much they got out of attending the Conference for Kids. They thanked the board for continuing to support the program.

    Seven teachers were approved for the summer school program at a fee of $60 per hour. They are Colin Ryan, Laura Schilling, Donna DiPaolo, Collette Clancy, Tracey Waleko, Sue Nicoletti, and Brad Dickinson.

    The board also learned that to rent an air-conditioning unit for one night at graduation, which is held in the gym, would cost the district $6,600. “I think we should sweat it out for the next two years and then we can use that money to buy permanent ones,” Mr. Perna said.

    Board members discussed holding the ceremony outdoors. But after factoring in the cost of a tent, amplification for the musical instruments, and the danger to girls wearing high heels, the idea was quickly scrapped.

    Along with the cast change among its board members, the East Hampton school district is changing its legal counsel, too. Morgan Lewis & Bockius, the Philadelphia-based firm that cost the district $2.3 million in fees during its contentious suit with Sandpebble Builders, is out. Pinks Arbeit & Nemeth, a Hauppauge law firm, is in.

    “The board felt that it needed a fresh look and a new direction in this long-standing litigation,” said James Amaden, the school board president, in a press release. “We are confident that the Pinks firm will provide the advice and direction desired.”

    The resolution to hire Pinks Arbeit was unanimous at Tuesday night’s board meeting. The special counsel will receive an hourly rate of $375, and will represent the district’s interests in the two pending litigations, East Hampton Union Free School District v. Sandpebble Builders and Sandpebble Builders v. Deborah Mansir, et al., effective immediately.

    The issue of peeling paint at the high school was also discussed. “Obviously, due to the scope of the work involved, the contractors are trying to research it as much as they can, to protect themselves,” said Eric Woellhof, the district’s director of facilites.

    Alison Anderson, a board member, had attended a recent school construction meeting, and had come away with the understanding that if an adhesion test was not conducted by the contractor before painting began, “We could have the whole building repainted free of charge.”

    “They probably should have raised these questions before they started painting,” said Mr. Woellhof.

    After Tuesday’s meeting, a reception was held to celebrate eight teachers being granted tenure. Diane Boos, Alison Fritzen, Meredith Jacobs, Matthew Monfett, Larry Roberts, Anthony Roza, Lisa Shaw, and Frank Sokolowski were congratulated with cake and handshakes by board members, the superintendent, and fellow teachers.

Fashion Show for School

    The Montauk Public School has announced a schoolwide environmental and health initiative that includes building planting spaces, supporting greenhouse activities, and constructing a child-friendly nature trail. To lend support to the cause, the school is hosting a fashion show and lunch at Solé East on Sunday at 2 p.m. All the proceeds will be used to pay for the outdoor educational opportunities. Tickets are $30. For those who want more information or wish to get involved in the project, Donna DiPaolo can be phoned at 668-2474.

ABCs of Good Food

    The Wellness Foundation’s executive director, Jennifer Taylor, is presenting the last in a series of nutrition workshops for families tonight at the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center from 6:30 to 7:30. The free Healthy Families, Healthy Kids classes have covered topics like power foods and healthy snacks. Tonight’s topic: “Happy Meals,” and not the kind that come with a toy. The purpose of the collaboration between the day care center and the Wellness Foundation was to instill positive nutrition habits in young children and help families learn how to be nutrition-savvy while grocery shopping and preparing meals.

    Reservations for tonight’s workshop an be made with the day care center.

Springs Seedlings

    Project MOST will hold a Springs Seedlings plant sale on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon on the grounds of the Springs School. The sale will raise money for Project MOST activities, including continued work on the greenhouse at the school.

Green Preschool Open House

    The Green School will hold an open house on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon in Sagaponack to welcome potential summer campers and a preschool class for next fall. There will be an opportunity to meet the teachers and tour the eco-friendly facility. The Green School offers five acres of farm and animals and “a sustainable curriculum through integrated lessons.” Reservations for the open house can be made via e-mail at [email protected]. The school’s Web site is theartfarmschool.org

Global Awareness Day

    Au pairs who work with Au Pair in America will introduce families to different cultures and countries during a family cultural fair at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton on Sunday from noon to 1:30 p.m.

    Sponsored by Au Pair in America and Global Awareness, the fair will give children a chance to learn a few words in a different language, participate in craft projects, and take a virtual trip around the world. Those who attend will receive “passports,” which will be “stamped” with flag stickers from each country table they visit.

Ballets for Spring

    The Conservatory of Ballet and Danse Arts in Bridgehampton will premiere two classical ballets in “Ballets for Spring,” a production this weekend at Guild Hall. The performance will include the second act of “Swan Lake,” set to the music of Tchaikovsky, and “The Magic Firebird,” with music by Stravinsky. “The Magic Firebird” tells the story of beautiful princesses, handsome Prince Ivan, an evil wizard, and a firebird.

    The cast will include pre-professional dancers from the Conservatory of Ballet and Danse Arts as well as professional dancers from New York. The guest artist Milan Misko will dance the role of Prince Ivan. He trained at the Kansas City Ballet School and has performed with the Take Dance Company, the Kazuko Hirabayashi Dance Theater, and 360 Dance.

    Tickets cost $15 for those over 16, $10 for kids 4 to 16, and $5 for toddlers. They are available in advance at the Danse Arts studio on the second floor of the Bridgehampton Community House, by phone, or online at [email protected]. Performances will be tomorrow and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

Garden Fund-Raiser

    The East Hampton High School’s sustainable garden and greenhouse project will have a plant sale on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The project’s first fund-raiser, it will be held on the high school grounds on Long Lane.

    Proceeds will go toward building raised garden beds.

Baseball Clinic

    On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Ross School will hold an open house for its summer camp in the Center for Well-Being on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton. Kids who attend can participate in a free baseball clinic at noon with Scott June, who has coached the Sag Harbor Whalers collegiate baseball team since 2009, and Edward McCarthy, the director of the Hamptons Baseball Camp.

    All ages have been invited to attend. More information can be had by calling 907-5555.