Lawmakers from Suffolk County told school officials Saturday they would push back on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal that would reduce aid to dozens of Long Island districts.

Members of the NYS Senate and Assembly told an audience of Suffolk County public school leaders at Longwood Middle School that they did not support cuts to foundation aid, the name given to a formula used to distribute state aid.

They also disavowed the governor’s call to end the “hold harmless” provision in school aid, which has allowed school districts to count on receiving as much state aid as the previous year.

Joe Werkmeister reports on Newsday.com that the lawmakers answered questions in front of more than 300 educators and students representing most of Suffolk County’s school districts at the 20th annual Regional Legislative Workshop hosted by Longwood Central School District, Eastern Suffolk BOCES and Suffolk Region PTA.

The event provided a forum for public school leaders to advocate directly to local lawmakers on pressing issues.

The most pressing issue centered on foundation aid, as school districts face uncertainty over how much state aid they can expect to receive while planning 2024-25 budgets. On Thursday, the state Education Department asked the legislature for a 3- to-5-year-phase-in of the governor’s budget proposal.

The governor in her budget address last month said the “massive increases” in state aid seen the past two years were unstainable.

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said at a legislative hearing on the budget that Hochul’s call to end the “hold harmless” provision in school aid this year would be too abrupt for school districts to handle.

New York State spends more per pupil — $26,571 annually — than any other state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Joe Werkmeister reports on Newsday.com that Governor Hochul has argued the school aid formula should be followed because many school districts have lost enrollment and have built record high reserves in recent years because of spikes in state and federal aid. Hochul’s proposal is part of her budget theme to make New York State more affordable to stem an exodus of residents and to attract more employers. The governor’s budget proposal, centered on a theme of making New York State more affordable, includes nearly $35 billion in aid to schools statewide.

Charles Dedrick, executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents said this weekend that school districts are tasked with doing more for students, such as mental health initiatives, than ever before and that districts should be allowed to keep higher reserves, similar to municipalities.

He said while he agrees that recent increases were unsustainable, the current proposal amounts to “pulling the rug out from everybody.”

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A message in a bottle written over 31 years ago by students at a North Fork high school was discovered by Adam Travis in Shinnecock Bay on Thursday.

Photos of its contents were posted on the Mattituck High School Alumni Facebook group, where thousands responded fondly remembering their late Earth Science teacher, Richard E. Brooks, who organized the project.

Dated October 1992, the note scribbled in pencil reads:

“Dear Finder, As part of an earth science project for 9th grade this bottle was thrown into the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island. Please fill in the information below and return the bottle 2 us. Merci, gracias, danke, thank you.”

It includes a return address to Shawn Magill, Ben Doroski and Mattituck High School science teacher Richard Brooks, plus postage of 19 cents.

Travis, 32, told Newsday he was “fascinated” by the discovery. The outdoorsman regularly finds vintage bottles along the shore.

“You find all this cool stuff that’s been hidden in the marsh,” he said Friday. “It’s a little piece of history.”

He shared what he found in a Mattituck alumni group on Facebook that got thousands of reactions, igniting nostalgia for students who fondly recall the activity and their teacher, who died from Alzheimer's disease last September at 83.

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Long Island was home to an estimated 111,900 immigrants living in the United States illegally in 2022, an increase of nearly 20% from a year earlier, when the same population was about 95,600, according to a new analysis provided to Newsday of census data. Matthew Chayes reports on Newsday.com that the increase comes as more than 174,000 migrants — most having crossed the southwest U.S. border from Mexico and then traveled north — have been processed through New York City’s homeless intake system since spring 2022. Some of those migrants have moved out to Nassau and Suffolk counties.

But the analysis, by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, captures only part of the influx.

For instance, the analysis excludes those migrants who have been paroled into the country, under authority the Biden administration has exercised on a historic scale, admitting more than 1 million migrants since the president took office in 2021. The administration has done so under a decades-old law that Congress is now considering restricting.

The analysis also excludes migrants who have filed an asylum claim — including ones that are pending — or who otherwise are legally permitted to live in the United States, such as those subject to Temporary Protected Status, according to Matthew Lisiecki, a senior research and policy analyst with the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

And the analysis doesn't include those migrants who came after 2022.

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The contractors working for the Army Corps of Engineers will begin the $11 million rebuilding of downtown Montauk’s beaches today.

The nearly 500-foot dredging vessel Ellis Island was expected to arrive in the waters off Montauk overnight Sunday and should begin pumping sand ashore by this afternoon.

Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that the piping the dredge will use to pump sand ashore has already been installed, and a platoon of bulldozers and other equipment are in place and ready to mobilize when the Ellis Island arrives with the first load of sand.

“We are preparing for the imminent arrival of the dredge vessel,” East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys said yesterday.

The Ellis Island, a 433-foot suction hopper barge, and it’s 158-foot companion tug the Douglas B. Mackie, completed another sand nourishment project on Fire Island on Saturday and departed for Montauk on Sunday afternoon.

The dredge will be vacuuming up sand from the sea floor about 10 miles southwest of downtown Montauk and toting it to a connection pipe off Kirk Park Beach, where it will be pumped ashore and pushed into place by bulldozers.

Once the work begins, it will continue around the clock — bulldozers working beneath banks of floodlights at night — as long sea conditions allow the Ellis Island to operate effectively.

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The MTA's congestion pricing plan, which aims to reduce traffic in New York City, is predicted to increase traffic at the Manhattan-bound Queens-Midtown Tunnel during the morning rush hour, in part because some drivers will no longer go out of their way to use the free Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, according to the project's environmental review. Alfonso A. Castillo reports on Newsday.com that MTA officials say the extra time spent at the tunnel will be made up for by reduced traffic in Manhattan, resulting in a net time savings for drivers. The environmental study predicts a 0.1% reduction in the average number of miles traveled by Long Island drivers. Congestion pricing is also projected to lead to an LIRR ridership increase of as much as 2%, which would mean about 4,600 additional passengers on trains each day. MTA officials say the railroad has enough capacity to handle the extra demand.

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When our children can no longer afford to stay on the East End, are we still a community?

Of all the existential questions facing this region, this one cuts most close to home for everyone who has experienced the recent mass exodus of longtime friends and neighbors, and their own children. Beth Young of EAST END BEACON reports that the Village of Sag Harbor, which for a long time prided itself on being the “UnHampton,” is now decidedly unaffordable for working class people. The median home sale price in the historic village is now above $2 million, and Sag Harbor’s recent efforts to change its code to encourage affordable housing have met with setbacks, after a developer proposed a 100,000-square-foot, 79-unit mixed-use affordable housing complex in the heart of the village just a day after Sag Harbor adopted an affordable housing code in 2022. A portion of that code was struck down by the New York State Supreme Court in the spring of 2023 after a lawsuit by Save Sag Harbor. The suit alleged the village did not properly apply State Environmental Quality Review Act rules to its code changes.

The Village Board of Trustees reached out to the public during a Jan. 27 community meeting at the Brick Kiln Road firehouse for ideas about how to foster affordable housing.

Sag Harbor Village Trustee Aidan Corish said, “We need to look at community industrial development, and offer the opportunities our children will need to have a fulfilling life locally.”

He added that because of the limited land area in Sag Harbor Village, which is only 1.8 square miles, regional solutions are necessary.