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Hampton Bays board of education President Kevin Springer and Superintendent Lars Clemensen discuss end-of-the-year celebrations during the May 11 board of education meeting.
Hampton Bays School District is the recipient of a $32,500 grant from Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy. The money will be used to support teacher training, curriculum writing, an assessment plan and development of a community program starting in the middle school and working up through high school.
“The digital age poses lots of challenges. Some studies have claimed that misinformation and disinformation on social media can travel up to six times faster and is more widespread than real information on social media, so teaching kids this skill — how to discern information — is important,” Superintendent Lars Clemensen said. “The goal is to help students develop the ability to critically consume information — to identify misinformation, to critically consume where they’re getting their information from and make informed decisions based on real information.”
Hampton Bays Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment Mike Carlson has been working with The Center for News Literacy, run by former Newsday Managing Editor Howard Schneider, who is the founder of Stony Brook’s School of Journalism, on the budding partnership. The program is also supported by the Rauch Foundation and the Long Island Community Foundation. Schools who take part in the program will be known as a lighthouse district. Plainview-Old Bethpage was the first partner district in 2019.
“We are facing a public health emergency, and the solution won’t be better technology, or even more penetrating and transparent journalism, however beneficial,” Mr. Schneider said in a statement. “It will be teaching students at an early age how to interrogate news and information. It needs to start early and be reinforced in order to be effective.”
Jonathan Anzalone, assistant director of the Center for News Literacy, said a summer academy that brought together 36 teachers from 15 Long Island school districts generated enthusiasm among educators for news literacy and the potential of the curriculum to have a transformative effect on student learning.
“Our hope is that participants feel as if they are part of a community and support network of news literacy educators who will share ideas and resources, and continue to spread news literacy and amplify its impact on students,” Mr. Anzalone said. “We have some terrific schools with innovative leaders who can lead the way.”
While graduation and other senior events like prom and awards dinners, and even fourth-graders’ field day are still in development, there are some tentative ideas and dates as administrators look ahead to end-of-the-year activities.
Celebrations will begin next month, with senior prom kicking things off June 2 at Oakland’s Restaurant & Marina. The varsity dinner and awards at East Wind Long Island will be June 9, a fourth-grade celebration and field day will be June 16 and an eighth-grade awards night will be June 17.
During the week of June 21, the Over the Bridge community parade will be Monday, a celebration of music will take place Tuesday, eighth-graders’ moving up ceremony will be Wednesday, senior awards will be Thursday and commencement will take place Saturday.
It is still unclear whether graduation will be one or two ceremonies, but the district is currently leaning toward two.
“We might be able to get one ceremony with some attendance restrictions on the number of tickets that are allowed,” Mr. Clemensen said. “Regardless, we’re going to maximize the guidance, so whatever is says, we’re doing to do exactly that, because we want this to be as normal as possible. We’ll continue to evolve and communicate with families.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, field trips have been cancelled, but benchmark trips have and will be rescheduled and shuffled to different grade levels to make up for the losses moving forward.
Typically, in seventh grade, students go to Frost Valley as part of a visit to Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Starting next school year, that trip will be made for those in eighth grade. Because of that, the Washington, D.C., trip that normally takes place during eighth grade will now happen during a student’s 11th grade year. Current sophomores went to Washington, D.C., as eighth-graders, while freshmen and eighth-graders have not. That trip will be reinstated for juniors in 2023.
