Riverhead schools and the entire community celebrated the storied championship season of the undefeated Blue Waves football team this year -- a team that went on to win Suffolk County and Long Island titles, as well as the coveted Rutgers Trophy for 2008. Riverhead schools and the entire community mourned the loss of high school art teacher Vincent Nasta, killed in the crash of the stunt plane he was flying at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in upstate New York in August. The outpouring of emotion at both the triumph of the football team and the tragedy of a life cut short was wide and deep in both the school and the Riverhead community at large. Both events galvanized the community in support of a school system often fraught with controversy, labor disputes and image problems.

Riverhead schools celebrated other achievements this year, including those of its Latin students, who won regional competitions again, and its musicians, who took top honors at a regional music festival in May, and its girls basketball team, which won its first league title since 1993.

With space issues a constant pressure, the school board grappled again with how to expand facilities for students at a cost district taxpayers will be able to bear. That exploration led to the idea of partnering with Peconic YMCA to provide preschool classroom space at a Y to be built on district-owned property in Aquebogue, where the district thought it might relocate its bus barn as well -- freeing up space for an expansion on its central campus. The plan met with immediate and intense opposition from neighbors in the Aquebogue community and remains unresolved at year's end.