Education

The 10 to 16-year-old members of the South Fork Natural History Museum's Young Environmentalists Society are working to be a force for change in their own community and the broader world.

Willie Jenkins says that as a teen, much of what he learned about Black history wasn't taught to him in a classroom at the Bridgehampton School, his alma mater. Rather, he says, a youth group called Unity helped him understand more about his own heritage and connect with a diverse collective of teens in the area.

Saoirse and Adrie Quinn are old enough to remember school before Covid-19 — before home was "school" on some days. Now Saoirse, a Springs School second grader, and Adrie, a fifth grader, are adjusting to a new normal, one that accounts for every moment of the on-site school day, but leaves them and their parents accountable for their remote learning at home.

Science activities, Spanish lessons, a movie screening, and an artistic garden in the clouds.

During Monday's Sag Harbor School Board meeting, district administrators addressed the return of after-school activities. Matt Malone, the Sag Harbor Elementary School principal, said that taking into account the cohort system, returning to co-curriculars would be counterintuitive. Clubs would mean that children from different student groupings intermingle, so Mr. Malone said he decided not to add them back into the schedule to maintain existing safety measures. The same goes for middle school clubs, officials said.

Covid-19 continued this week to wreak havoc in local schools, with cases popping up in Montauk and Springs for the first time and a third instance emerging in East Hampton's John M. Marshall Elementary School.

Project Most will hold a fund-raising toy sale on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the East Hampton Neighborhood House at 92 Three Mile Harbor Road.

Toys for children ages 2 and up, such as dolls, sports equipment, trucks, and video games, will be available for purchase for as little as $2 each.

All proceeds support Project Most, which runs educational programs for children here during the school year, on weekends, and in the summer.

East Hampton High School students who are 16 and have their learner's permit can sign up for virtual driver's education classes for $200 for the fall semester.

The Montauk School will be closed on Wednesday and Thursday after a teacher was identified Tuesday afternoon as having contracted Covid-19.

Another confirmed case of Covid-19 in a student at the John M. Marshall Elementary School in East Hampton was reported late Friday afternoon, the third such case to come to light in the last nine days, and right after that came word of a case at the Springs School.

Beth Doyle, who has served as principal of the John M. Marshall Elementary School for more than seven years, has resigned to accept an assistant superintendent position in the South Country School District.

Coming up for kids: ukulele lessons, cyanoprinting, musical theater readings, and more.

One case of Covid-19 in the first grade at the John M. Marshall Elementary School last week wasn't enough to shut down school in East Hampton, but a second case in second grade, confirmed on Tuesday, led school officials to close the entire district Wednesday. That afternoon, the district informed parents that students who share the classroom with the Covid-positive second grader and that classroom's head teacher will have to quarantine for 14 days.

After being notified of a second confirmed case of Covid-19 in a student at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, the East Hampton School District has decided to close the elementary school, middle school, and high school on Wednesday "out of an abundance of caution," the district said in an email and voice memo sent to parents on Tuesday afternoon.

The East Hampton Library wants teens in grades nine through 12 to make the best of a beautiful season with its Fall Bucket List Challenge.

Here's how it works: capture memorable moments from the library's list in selfies and email them to the young adult librarians. That's it! 

The bucket list includes pumpkin picking, carving a jack o'lantern, hiking, watching a scary movie, navigating a corn maze, and other fun fall activities.

The email address for submissions is [email protected].

The East Hampton School District on Saturday announced that what had been a suspected case of Covid-19 in a student is now a confirmed case at John M. Marshall Elementary School.

A Southampton Elementary School student has contracted Covid-19, according to the School Covid Report Card, a state website that tracks cases in public and private schools and colleges, but the student had not been on campus and classes had not yet begun before the diagnosis.

Charles Soriano, the principal of the East Hampton Middle School, announced this week that after-school clubs will return for in-person meetings starting on Oct. 5. Homework help sessions will also be reinstated. All standard Covid-19 precautions and rules will be in place.

The goal is to "provide social, artistic, and creative stimulation for our youngsters, so critical for this age group," Dr. Soriano said in an announcement. "Restarting our clubs and activities is more important than ever, particularly with the countywide postponement of athletics."

As to the process of preparing for this unprecedented school year, James Crenshaw said he has a tendency to approach anything by planning for everything. "The understanding is that you're probably going to miss a ton of things," and by going into overdrive at the beginning, there are fewer surprises along the way.

The Sag Harbor School Board on Monday opened a discussion of recognizing Juneteenth on the school calendar and renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day. Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19 each year to mark the day that the last enslaved people were freed in post-Civil War Texas in 1865. New York State passed legislation to officially recognize Juneteenth as a holiday.

High school students on the East End are invited to join the Retreat's eight-week Teen Leaders program, which starts Wednesday and runs through Nov. 18.

Before the start of the school year, the Sagaponack organization Supplies for Success announced it had donated 20,000 backpacks filled with new school supplies to local children whose families cannot afford them.

Since Mindy Richardson established the organization in 2002, Supplies for Success has helped 135,000 underserved local children. And since March 5, 2020, when Ms. Richardson's son Eric died in a ski accident, the organization has responded to the pandemic in his honor. 

Madeline Grabb, the Bridgehampton School's 2020 valedictorian, is one of 200 people chosen to compete in a research competition known as the World Food Prize. Her gap-year project focuses on ideas for fighting malnutrition in Pakistan, where 68 percent of the population suffers from anemia.

Tim Frazier, the recently retired Southampton Intermediate School principal and the current vice president of the Springs School Board, has stepped in as interim director of the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center.

Trivia time for teens, circle time for toddlers, and more.

Two school districts here have brought independent investigators on board to look into sensitive incidents and school residency.

With school back in session, online homework help is being made more available to library patrons across the East End. The sessions, hosted by Brainfuse, an online tutoring provider, offer one-on-one help and test prep in a wide range of subjects for students in kindergarten through 12th grade on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 11 p.m.

The Sag Harbor Learning Center, formerly the Stella Maris Regional School, finally opened this week to prekindergarten and kindergarten students in the Sag Harbor School District, which bought the building from the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre in 2016.

The East Hampton School District will be providing meals to remote and hybrid students who are on the federal free and reduced-price breakfast and lunch programs. The district will also be providing meals to Springs School students in the same categories.

Motivated by the patterns of tobacco use among their peers, a student group called Breathe In Change is renewing its efforts to educate other students about the dangers of tobacco use — including cigarettes in addition to e-cigarettes, according to the students.