To Continue Swimming

East Hampton’s participation in a swimming program for elementary school students will go forward next year, although in reduced form. At Tuesday night’s meeting of the East Hampton School Board, Richard Burns, the superintendent, reported a consensus had been reached to preserve its spirit. 

Officials, thinking the program took up too much class time, had proposed that it be limited to kindergarten. Instead, it will be structured for students in grades one through three in June only, starting with next school year. Kindergarten swimming lessons will remain throughout the year as part of physical education classes. This year, students from kindergarten through fifth grade have swimming lessons four times a year.

“We have a good, viable plan. Everyone’s happy,” Dennis Sullivan, assistant principal of the John M. Marshall Elementary School, said this week.

John Ryan Sr., a former East Hampton School Board member whose son was instrumental in creating the program, called the result “terrific.”