An Opportunity To Build

Springs School has long been the heart of an East Hampton hamlet where families and residents rally around the school district. Springs is a community that has maintained a year-round population, with grandparents and parents in the district who once were students on School Street themselves. There is a lot of pride there, even as the district has struggled in recent years under the financial weight of not having a commercial tax base to support the school.

The community threw its weight behind a long overdue expansion of the school facilities in 2018 — work that was sold, in part, simply on the need for more square footage. Anyone who questioned that reality needed only to see the challenge the school faced as it reopened last fall amid the COVID-19 virus pandemic. The expansion was also presented as an opportunity for the district to have space to create more robust programming for children, and to compete with neighboring districts that already have updated facilities.

Most parents will say the educators at Springs are second to none, who, in this last, very challenging year, guided students back into the classroom with a keen eye on mental health concerns amid an unprecedented pandemic.

Looking toward the future, administrators, parents and educators last week began debating what the next year might look like. We hope the district moves forward with offering more, not less, programming for students as we all attempt to return to a new normal.

There are many unknowns — currently, only children ages 12 to 14 at Springs are eligible to be vaccinated for COVID-19, and it is unknown when that will expand to younger children or what guidance the state will offer for districts for the next school year. But there is also a lot we do understand. Most Springs School students have been in school five days a week since February, and it has been successful. When school districts opened in the fall, it was expected nationwide that the reopening would result in a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases. Instead, with safety protocols in place, the opposite turned out to be true — children were safer in schools, and school transmission of the disease was not as prevalent as people thought it would be.

As we look toward the next school year, we hope to see programming return that was understandably stripped for the current school year, including Spanish language classes for younger grades. Studies are abundantly clear about the benefits of entering a foreign language program as early as possible, and having students wait until sixth grade to begin a foreign language program will put them at disadvantage. In a growing bilingual and multilingual community, and world, it is even more urgent that we give Springs students these resources.

The benefits of experiential and interdisciplinary learning cannot be overstated, but the loss of a full time STEAM educator — and the onerous challenge of asking elementary educators to now develop a STEAM program for their classrooms — is a loss for the Springs community and should be revisited. STEAM programming introduces concepts that are desired in the current job market, inspires children to think creativity and offers interdisciplinary programming for young students.

After the last year, in particular, both students and parents need to count on time in the classroom. Many parents work full-time jobs. Last week, administrators discussed potentially offering a half-day, once a month, on a Friday, to be used for professional development. Asking families to find childcare for a half-day every month is an unfair burden and also creates a situation of inequity. Families with more means will be able to find childcare options and perhaps use that time to supplement their children’s education. Others will be forced, once more, to consider leaving children at home, alone.

Springs School Board of Education President Barbara Dayton noted last week that Springs has “some very exciting times ahead,” and that is certainly true. Moving further away from the realities of the pandemic and into a new school building presents Springs School with an opportunity for reinvention. We hope to see that reinvention build on educational opportunities, and offer students and educators the opportunity to explore more together, rather than less.