Education

A group of parents of Sagaponack School students spent the last several years lobbying the school board to add Bridgehampton as a choice for children in prekindergarten and in fourth grade and up. Their campaign has yielded the outcome they had hoped for.     

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli has announced that the cap on tax levy increases for the 2020-21 budget cycle is 1.81 percent, down from 2 percent in the last two years.     

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor is offering a number of new performance workshops for kids and teens starting in the next few weeks.

The Sag Harbor School Board on Jan. 13 declined to take a formal stance on proposed state legislation that would mandate the human papillomavirus vaccine for students — but not without a discussion of whether or not it is even in the board’s purview to take on such matters.     

Lea Bryant, a health teacher at the East Hampton Middle School, has been named Suffolk County health teacher of the year by the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

“Let’s get together as one, support each other, and create action plans so we can move forward and have an impact on our community,” Bonnie Michelle Cannon, the executive director of the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, told a crowd of more than 200 people before a screening of “Just Mercy” on Saturday at the Regal Cinema in East Hampton.     

As Monday is Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the library will take a page from his legacy when it hosts a “diverse book show-and-tell” on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. for all ages.     

The 28th Guild Hall Student Art Festival aims to bring students’ artistic experiences together in a cohesive way.     

Construction crews working at the Sag Harbor Learning Center last spring removed about 300 tons of soil contaminated with arsenic, which school officials said likely seeped into the ground from wood treated with chromated copper arsenate that was thought to exist on the property at one point in time. 

South Fork schools have followed up on a 2019 New York State Education Department mandate requiring schools to test for the presence of mercury vapors in certain types of flooring materials, and documentation provided by the Sag Harbor and East Hampton School Districts this week showed none of the rubberlike floors in their buildings were emitting those harmful vapors.

There was no official “first flush” fanfare, but instead a simple announcement on Twitter last Thursday that the Springs School had turned on its newly completed innovative/alternative septic system while the students were on winter recess.

Raquel Babb has always loved movies. Some of her favorites depict life in high school in America, and almost always feature cheerleaders. The only problem was that the Ross School, where Raquel studies, hadn’t had a cheerleading team since 2012.