Love In

Schools in Springs and Bridgehampton Consider an Arrangement

By Dan Rattiner

One of the stranger stories to surface this September is about the flirtation that is taking place between the Bridgehampton and Springs schools. Any kid going to either of these schools must be shaking their heads in amazement about what's going on.

Before I go on with any of this, I should say that I am a resident of the Springs School District and what might or might not happen will affect my family and me. That said, here's the story.

Three weeks ago, officials from the Springs School, which is a K-8 school, requested a meeting and then held a meeting with Bridgehampton School officials to discuss the idea of allowing graduates of the Springs School to attend high school at Bridgehampton. Bridgehampton is a K-12 school, is nine miles away, in another town and in terms of culture, might be on another planet.

The meeting went very well. According to one Bridgehampton official, if Bridgehampton would have accepted the proposal, it appeared that the Springs people would have signed on the dotted line right then and there. In any case, Bridgehampton warmly received Springs, there was talk about how they might mesh and how they might not mesh and Bridgehampton said they would think about it.

Here is how these two schools differ. Springs is kids on bikes, about 60% white and 40% Latino. Only 1% are African-American. It is also overflowing with energy, has about 580 kids, a staff of about 50 and student test scores that usually finish in the middle of the pack when New York State does its annual testing of first and fourth graders in math and English. It is a classic white bread school going through the not unusual Latino transformation.

Bridgehampton, from K-12, has only 161 kids. A high percentage of them, perhaps 50%, are African American, because there is a large enclave of that ethnic group on the Sag Harbor Turnpike. And they are getting an excellent education.

The reason for this is because of white flight. Years ago, the school was about 60% white and 40% African-American. But in the 1970s, the whites en masse fled the school and enrolled their kids in private schools that soon flourished just out of town. Bridgehampton now was 90% African-American, and after that, white Bridgehampton residents made an attempt to shut down the Bridgehampton School because, with only half the students but the same number of teachers and administrators - all had tenure - the cost of the school was very high. Mercifully, this attempt failed. And the result has been perhaps the best-offered education imaginable. There are so many teachers per student that it is almost like a private tutorial. As for the test results, how about the top of the heap? Bridgehampton gets 100% when the state comes in.

After the Springs-Bridgehampton get together, the Bridgehampton School officials held their own meeting about what had just transpired.

One person said that if Springs wanted to send their kids to high school at Bridgehampton School, there wouldn't be enough room. Bridgehampton should have the option to send their younger kids to Springs.

Another person said that if Springs sent their kids to high school in Bridgehampton, the test scores would plummet. To which the superintendent of the Bridgehampton School, an African American woman named Dr. Youngblood, commented, "I don't like what I am hearing."

This meeting and the one before it were caused by three different factors, all of which end with the word money. One is that people tend to talk one way in general, but a totally different way when it comes to their own kids. Two is that the Springs School is caught between a rock and a hard place, which I will explain in a minute. And three is that the rules and regulations in the state, county, towns and school districts, regarding who pays what to educate our kids, are unbelievably screwed up.

If the Bridgehampton School is an excellent school because of white flight (serves them right), the Springs School District is another matter. I moved into this district years ago because I wanted to raise my young children in a community with lots of other kids and lots of little league and lots of school activities. I also wanted to be close to my parents who lived in Montauk. So I looked into East Hampton.

In East Hampton, there is only one place you could go to live that would fill that bill. The other school districts in the town are quieter with fewer kids. Springs was where it was at. And it was filled with rich folks, artists, locals, fishermen, merchants and blue-collar people. In other words, lots of everybody. What could be better?

The Federal Government has a law that says no matter what, no matter if a person is a homeowner or a renter, a member of the DAR or an illegal alien, they have to send their kids to school and the schools have to take them in.

Then they said that the dotted lines which defined the extremities of the districts surrounding the particular schools had to pay the taxes required for however many of them were enrolled in that school.

As it has turned out, running a school is the leading cost on your real estate taxes. And if your district is teeming with kids, then the taxes are high. If your district has very few kids, then your taxes are low. The taxes in Springs are far and away the highest in East Hampton Town. They are four times as high, for example, when compared to the taxes paid in Amagansett, a district of about the same acreage and population, but with only one quarter the kids. And they are only higher because of what one has to pay for the schools.

If the Federal Government requires that every kid go to school, why doesn't the Federal or State Government have a mechanism to feed money into a district that has a lot of kids? They don't. And it beats me.

The Springs kids, up until this year and since the school was founded 150 years ago, have graduated their kids into East Hampton High School. Springs is in East Hampton. It's five minutes away. In Springs you're raised to be a Bonacker in the same way that in Tuckahoe you're raised to be a Mariner. The East Hampton High School Bonacker-Southampton High School Mariner rivalry has been contested on the football field every autumn for years and years.

As for Bridgehampton, it is too small to field a football team. It stands alone. But Bridgehampton is part of Southampton.

In any case, every year when elementary school graduations take place, the school officials meet to determine how much money a high school has to charge each school per kid to go there. There is no East Hampton High School District after all. The cost has to be divided up. Seems fair enough. Last year, the charge per kid was about $15,000 - up a few percentage points from the year before. Springs, which has the most kids, had to budget the biggest amount, and they did. But this year, the charge per kid has been set at $24,000 per kid. It's a half again increase. And Springs cannot afford it.

"Local people with kids can't afford to live here if this happens," one Springs School parent said. "They will flee the Springs."

Which, if you think about it, will mean that school taxes in Springs will go down, although that would be years and years away. Meanwhile, they had to think of right now.

And then somebody got the bright idea to go shopping for other high schools. And Bridgehampton came up. Bridgehampton has just announced that they will charge $15,000 for each out-of-district kid who goes there. And they are not raising that price.

I blame our New York State Legislators for this problem happening at this time. Help needs to be provided for parents in Springs to have their kids go to East Hampton High, to play for and root for the Bonackers. It is not forthcoming. And I am sure this problem, where you have a concentration of kids in one district, is not unique. It has be a Statewide problem.

It seems, however, that cries for help fall on deaf ears. Perhaps all our well-heeled State legislators live in posh school districts and don't see the problem. It's okay for them and their kids. And that's all that matters. Right?

It is true there are many more aspects to this problem, including multiple family residents and illegal immigrants and wealthy summer people who send their kids to private schools in Manhattan and don't want their taxes to go up on their vacation home, but I think this is the essence of it.

I still remember a very rich man who owned a big house in Springs standing up at a school meeting I attended to consider a school budget increase and saying he and his wife are in Palm Beach all winter, have their kids in private schools and won't vote for anything that raises his taxes here.

In any case, if you see a very confused-looking Springs kid out on the basketball court next year wearing a yellow and black Bridgehampton Killer Bee uniform and playing for the state championship against a tiny upstate school called Kaboodle with 71 students - it's only fair that little schools play little schools so big kids don't hurt little kids - now you'll understand.

Anybody want to buy my house?

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