Bridgehampton School may be small, but we’re like family

Credit: Kidsday staff artist / Maven Martin, Wheatley Heights
I go to Bridgehampton School. Most people would consider us a really small school. We have about 200 kids from pre-K through 12th grade, and kindergarten through 12th grade are all in one building. The average class size is 15 kids. There are pros and cons of having a small school.
One advantage of attending a small school is everyone is so close. When you go to a school where there are so few kids, everyone is so nice to each other. We all treat each other like family. Everybody knows everyone’s names, and it’s very relaxed.
Another advantage of going to a small school is having shared sports. After school we get to go to different schools to play the sports we want to play. By doing that we get the chance to meet a lot of new kids in different towns.
A smaller school means the class size is small. This is good because we get more time with our teacher, which means she gets to know us all very well. Working with 15 students means that our teacher has more time to work one-to-one with us. Also, in a bigger school you might have three math teachers, but in a small school, you have one math teacher, so everyone is getting the same education. I think there is less bullying, because the staff is able to watch everyone better. In every hallway there is a staff member who keeps watch over us.
One of the disadvantages is that you have to play sports with other schools. It’s fun to make new friends, but you always have to travel. I go to Bridgehampton School but I play for Pierson. Instead of wearing my school colors, black and yellow, I have to wear red and black. Pride in my school and town is missing.
Another disadvantage is you have stay with the same kids all the time. Since there are only around 15 kids in your grade, you have only one class per grade level. We travel to the same classes together and don’t mix with the other grades for classes.
Last but not least, we don’t get to do things bigger schools get to do. Small schools can’t have big activities because of the number of kids. For example, if you try to host a movie night and it costs the school a lot of money, you can’t know for sure that more than 20 kids are going to show up. That means you can’t have a movie night. Larger schools have dances for the elementary and middle school and might have really big spirit assemblies, but we don’t get to do big stuff like that.
Overall, going to a small school is wonderful. For me, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. The best advantage of my school here in Bridgehampton is that everyone treats each other like family, which is most important.
Marie Hand and Thomas House’s sixth- and seventh-grade students, Bridgehampton School