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🐝 Should Districts Consider Merging?

🐝 Should Districts Consider Merging?

Falling Enrollment, Equipment Upgrades, Half Sandwich & Soup

Thomas Loncar
January 30, 2026

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Good Morning, North Fork! If your brain is already at dinner plans, we don’t blame you.

In today’s North Fork Buzz:

Falling Enrollment
Equipment Upgrades
Half Sandwich & Soup

Ready, Set, Go!

The Lowdown

Falling Enrollment 📉

Enrollment across North Fork schools keeps sliding, and local districts are starting to feel the squeeze.

Since 2012, more than 700 students have disappeared from classrooms across Southold Town, a shift driven largely by soaring home prices and smaller families. And fewer students means less state aid, tighter budgets, and tougher decisions about which programs schools can realistically keep.

The biggest hit has come at Mattituck-Cutchogue School District, where enrollment has dropped by more than a third over the past decade. Superintendent Shawn Petretti says shrinking class sizes could eventually make it harder to offer the advanced courses and electives families expect, raising a once unthinkable question: Should districts consider merging? ($)

Get the full story 👉 Suffolk Times

Chili Cook Off 🌶️

Nothing cures a winter chill quite like a good bowl of chili, and this weekend, you can taste a whole lineup of them.

On Sunday from 12–4 PM, Greenport Harbor Brewing Company is turning up the heat at its Peconic brewery with its annual chili cook-off, inviting locals to sample creations from area restaurants and fire departments and cast their vote for the best batch.

Your $25 ticket gets you unlimited tastings, a vote in the People’s Choice competition, and access to an event-only beer release brewed just for the occasion.

Get the full story 👉 Northforker

Equipment Upgrades 🚓

The Southold Town Police Department is set to receive just over $1 million in federal funding to replace aging patrol vehicles and upgrade officer radios, improvements officials say will boost reliability and communication across the town, including service on Fishers Island.

The funding, will help the department purchase 10 new fully equipped patrol SUVs and additional dual-band portable radios, allowing officers to better communicate with neighboring agencies and maintain stronger coverage in harder-to-reach areas.

Get the full story 👉 North Fork Sun

Beach Cleanup to Cover Art 🎨

This month’s Dan’s Papers North Fork cover has a local story behind it, one rooted in creativity, community, and a little beach cleanup along the way.

The cover artwork was created through a collaboration between mixed media artist Bri Sander and local Girl Scouts Hannah Boyd and Remy Tryniszewski as part of their Silver Award project. Guided by Sander through her work with the nonprofit UpSculpt, the Scouts collected marine debris from a shoreline close to home and transformed it into public art, now permanently on display at the Mattituck-Laurel Library.

Sander, whose work often blends art and environmental advocacy, uses discarded materials to highlight the growing problem of ocean plastic and humanity’s complicated relationship with nature.

She’s also recently unveiled a large public mural in Southold made from thousands of recycled plastic pieces, continuing her mission to turn waste into something worth stopping to look at.

Get the full story 👉 Dan’s Papers

Photo of the Week

📸 submitted by Alex Georgoulakos

Tag @NorthForkBuzz or email us at [email protected] to get your photos in The Buzz!

Foodie Friday: Powered by You

Starting soon, we want to open up this section to You, because some of the best things we’ve ever eaten weren’t ordered off a menu. They were made in someone’s kitchen, brought to a potluck, dropped off in a foil pan “just because,” or passed around as a handwritten recipe that’s somehow survived three moves and one dishwasher incident.

So here’s the plan: we’re launching a North Fork Buzz Community Recipe Feature, and we’d love to include your go to dishes in upcoming Foodie Friday editions.

Have a recipe you swear by?
Send it our way, weeknight staples, Sunday sauces, family classics, best ever cookies, slow winter soups, summer salads, anything. If it’s delicious and you’d make it again, it belongs here.

How to submit:
Email us at [email protected] with:

The recipe (ingredients + steps)
A photo (even an iPhone pic is perfect)
Your name
Optional but encouraged: a short story - when you make it, who you make it for, or why it’s special

We’ll feature select recipes in upcoming Foodie Fridays, and yes, we’ll give you full credit and bragging rights.

Foodie Friday 🍽

Pip’s Café & Provisions has slowly become our go to weekend morning stop, the kind of place you pop into for coffee and then also end up having a biscuit (which could honestly have its own Foodie Friday) or an egg sandwich that sets the tone for the rest of the day.

But somehow, we’d never made it back for lunch. Until now.

And now we’re wondering why we waited so long. Pip’s half sandwich and soup lunch special hits that perfect middle ground, warm, comforting, and satisfying without feeling heavy. It’s the kind of simple, well made lunch that feels just right this time of year, especially when you need something cozy but still want to get on with your afternoon.

Here’s how it works: you pick your half sandwich (Squash Banh Mi, Grilled Cheese, Cubano, or Roast Chicken) and pair it with a bowl of their house-made soup, either Hearty Chicken Noodle or Grandma’s Tomato Bean.

At $15, it’s the kind of lunch that feels thoughtfully put together with good ingredients. And they make it dangerously easy to add a cookie to the combo, to the point where it almost feels wrong not to. So yes, we got the cookie.

Half Sandwich

We went with the Cubano. It’s everything you want from a pressed sandwich, savory ham, melted Swiss, house made dill pickles, and a swipe of Dijon that brings just enough tang to keep things balanced. The bread comes out warm and perfectly pressed, crisp on the outside but still soft enough to hold everything together, and the sandwich carries a subtle smokiness that adds another layer of flavor without overpowering anything. The pickles do a lot of the heavy lifting here, cutting through the cheese and ham so the whole thing never feels too heavy.

Soup

We went with Grandma’s Tomato Bean. Made with roasted San Marzano tomatoes and creamy cannellini beans, it lands somewhere between light and comforting, smooth, savory, and just hearty enough without feeling heavy. The tomatoes bring a gentle sweetness, while the beans give it that silky texture that makes each spoonful feel satisfying, especially on a chilly afternoon.

Cookie

A classic chocolate chip cookie, baked soft and golden with plenty of chocolate chips and finished with a light sprinkle of flaky sea salt. It lands right in that sweet spot: soft with just a little crisp at the edges, evenly thick all the way through, and with just the right amount of give when you bite in. Not too gooey, not too firm, just a really well made cookie that feels like the natural ending to the meal. Skipping it would’ve felt like a mistake. So yes, get the cookie.

What’s your favorite lunch order and from where? Email us at [email protected]. We want to hear from you

Nothing in this section is sponsored. They’re just fun things you need to know. I’ll always let you know when something is sponsored

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THANKS!

Thanks for reading the North Fork Buzz today. Like what you read? Send it to someone who loves a combo meal.

Tom Loncar- Publisher
Nicole Loncar- Editor + Partnerships