Education

State officials do not think it’s possible to reopen schools this year "in a way that would keep our students and educators safe.”

Almost universally, high school seniors are lamenting the loss of a special year. "The world changed right when we were born,” said Heidi Bucking, a Pierson High School senior, “and now it’s going to change again right when we’re going to be adults.”

While schools statewide are closed because of Covid-19, their employees are still being paid, but many are saving money in other areas.

The extensive renovation and expansion at the Bridgehampton School, which was halted for a time because of the pandemic, has been deemed an essential construction project.

Local school boards are still waiting to hear from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo about when school budget votes and the election of board members can take place.

The Montauk School is the next on the South Fork to explore a construction project. According to Jack Perna, the superintendent, the district has reached an agreement with an architect, John Tanzi, to replace the school’s three portable classrooms and storage room (which has doubled as a classroom), which date from September 1973. The plans are to install modular rooms that would be more permanent than their predecessors.

Covid-19 has cast a long shadow over the health care industry, and there’s a sense of trepidation and anxiety among the 65 practical nurses who are graduating Thursday from their Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services program. But there’s also a sense of hope and purpose among the graduates.

The world’s top-ranked female triathlete, Katie Zaferes, an Olympic silver-medalist cyclist, Mari Holden, and Ally Friedman, a Ross School senior who in February was cited by the United States Tennis Association as its junior volunteer of the year, mentored Theresa Roden’s I-Tri girls on Saturday.

Nassau and Suffolk Counties’ Athletic Councils pulled the plug on high school springs sports, a “heartbreaking decision,” in the words of Section VIII’s executive director, Pat Pizzarelli, but one that was not surprising given the coronavirus pandemic.

Chef Jill Hamill has quite the following on YouTube lately. In just a few days, a handful of her cooking videos have racked up hundreds of views and subscribers.

Challenge for educators: teaching social-emotional learning through a screen.

Supplies for Success, a national organization founded 18 years ago and now based in Sagaponack, has handed out thousands of art kits filled with coloring books, crayons, construction paper, washable glue, and other items to help keep children learning and busy during the Covid-19 pandemic.