Education

For the 10th year in a row, the Sag Harbor School District is proposing a spending plan that stays under the state-mandated cap on tax levy increases while maintaining all programs, services, and extracurricular activities and sports.

On the table is a $44.87 million budget for 2021-22. The projected tax levy is $40.32 million, a 1.48-percent increase from this year, but still slightly under the levy limit. Year over year, the budget would increase by 1.22 percent.

 Springs School officials released updated 2021-22 budget projections during Monday's school board work session. Among the highlights was the news that this year's projected tax levy increase has been trimmed from 3.91 percent down to 2.61 percent — still within state limits on tax-levy increases — although that number is not yet set in stone.

This year, high school seniors can expect graduation ceremonies that inch closer to the traditional norms of past years, thanks to new guidelines announced by New York's governor on Monday which expand capacity over 2020's limitations.

The LongHouse Reserve, Amber Waves Farm, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and Duck Creek Farm are among the places that Springs School students will likely visit in the coming months, as field trips appear to be on the horizon once again.

The East Hampton Middle School has a new face, sort of, in the principal's office. Adam Fine, who was East Hampton High School principal for 10 years and is now the assistant district superintendent, is filling in for Charles Soriano, who is out on medical leave through the end of the school year.

The Children's Museum of the East End is opening up more hours for more fun, and other activities coming up for kids and teens.

For the first time in its 12-year history of offering prekindergarten, the Sag Harbor School District will offer a full-day program next year. Parents of incoming prekindergarten students in Sag Harbor will have the opportunity next Thursday to learn all about it.

East Hampton High School students have been busy networking with and learning job-oriented skills from professionals through the school's partnership with Career and Employment Options, a company focused on boosting opportunities for students of all learning levels, including those with disabilities.

Over the next several weeks, the Montauk School has activities promoting well-being lined up for each grade, starting this week with the eighth grade all the way down through prekindergarten during the first week of June.

Normally, Wellness Week was to happen all at once, Montauk teachers explained in an announcement, but Covid-19 forced them to make some changes to the program.

High school students are invited to enter the East Hampton Library's poetry contest in celebration of National Poetry Month in April.

Poetry submissions can be emailed to [email protected] with the subject line "YA Poetry Contest" and the student's name, school, grade, and phone number.

The competition will culminate on April 25 with a reading session led by Shay Siegel, a local poet and author who writes for young adult audiences.

A 3-0 win over Miller Place Monday night put East Hampton at 8-1-1, with a good chance at winning or sharing a league title.

East Hampton's girls cross country team could well win another county title later this month. Results were mixed for the girls field hockey, volleyball, and tennis teams.

Fourth graders at John M. Marshall Elementary School celebrated both Black History Month and Women’s History Month by studying nonfiction writing and recreating in person some of the most famous characters from world history, from Amelia Earhart to Muhammed Ali and Galileo to Anne Frank.

"As teachers we encourage students to research individuals who they have not heard of before, or individuals who lived during a time period of interest," the fourth grade teachers wrote in an email. "We also tried to steer the students towards individuals who impacted the world in some way."

East Hampton High's golf team began the season Friday with two wins. Its football team fell short on Friday, and its boys vollebyall team, as of Monday had yet to get its starting lineup on the floor, due to quarantines in its own ranks and among the teams it was supposed to play.

As New York State officials press the federal government for a waiver that would allow schools to skip standardized tests for the second year in a row, administrators here are busy preparing to give the tests, just in case the waiver doesn’t come through.

Around the same time the news broke that eight people, including six women of Asian descent, had been killed on March 16 at two spas and a massage parlor near Atlanta, Chihana Kashiwabara was learning in her 11th grade history class at the Ross School about racism toward Asian and Asian-American people -- starting with xenophobic propaganda toward immigrants in the late 19th century, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and onward.

"A Sky Full of Poems" with Guild Hall, reading a rainbow with Bay Street, and other fun stuff for kids and teens.

East Hampton High School's boys soccer team improved its record to 6-1-1 here Monday morning by way of a 3-0 win over Islip -- its seventh shutout of the season -- thus setting up a big game with league-leading Amityville that was to have been contested here yesterday.

The Huntington Arts Council has awarded Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center a grant for the center’s Color of Freedom art show, which will take place starting Oct. 7 at the Julie Keyes Gallery in Sag Harbor after being postponed because of the pandemic last spring

East Hampton High's footballers may have lost 18-8 last Thursday, but their improved performance augured well.

Since playing to a 1-1 tie with Hampton Bays on March 12, Don McGovern's team defeated Wyandanch 4-0 on the 15th, shut out Shoreham-Wading River 4-0 on the 17th, and blanked Bayport-Blue Point 2-0 here Friday.

The March-April season has thus far gone swimmingly, at least as far as most of East Hampton High's teams are concerned, for the girls teams especially.

A former Ross School student and his father have filed a $10 million lawsuit in Suffolk Supreme Court alleging that the student was bullied, threatened, and verbally abused by Ross School faculty during and after an overseas field trip in 2020.

The East Hampton Library will offer kids a chance to learn about turtles and tortoises today, and starting Saturday, Bay Street Theater will host online storytelling sessions with a diverse lineup of children's authors, each at 10:30 a.m., for eight weeks.

Monday's Springs School budget workshop was the first time board members and the community at large got an up-close look at the preliminary budget number the district is wrangling with for its 2020-21 budget: $32.12 million. Nearly every time a school administrator pitched a budget increase in a particular area, board members raised some form of the question "Why?"

By now, it's an open secret: A single gathering of teens, reportedly held two weekends ago at a house in Sag Harbor and attended by students from multiple schools, has resulted in a spate of positive Covid-19 cases.

In the pandemic, dance competitions, school theater programs, and other creative opportunities were unceremoniously interrupted, as if a Band-Aid had suddenly been ripped off. But with the gradual improvement in Covid-19 statistics — a lower seven-day average positivity rate, for example — has come the return of performing arts programs. High school musical theater productions have resumed, albeit with many modifications in place, and groups like Our Fabulous Variety Show and the Neo-Political Cowgirls are also planning programs.

The Amagansett School Board on Tuesday voted to add two separate propositions to the May 18 budget ballot, one for renovating outdoor basketball courts, the other for technology and energy upgrades.

Two local school districts, Bridgehampton and Sagaponack, are searching for candidates for the role of superintendent. Both have announced surveys to solicit feedback and direction from their families and communities.

East Hampton's field hockey, soccer, volleyball, and cross-country teams were on the field, court, and course this week as a belated fall season got underway.