GUILDERLAND — Public comments at recent board meetings have effected changes in next year’s proposed school budget.

Flag football, to begin in the spring of 2025, has been added as a varsity sport for a cost of $12,500.

And a third section of Comprehensive Skills, for special needs students, has been added at the high school for $87,900 targeted for students aged 14 to 22.

On Feb. 13, March 5, and March 12, parents spoke to the school board about concerns that their students’ special needs weren’t being met at Guilderland High School. They lauded the education their children got at Farnsworth Middle School, singling out the school’s principal for praise.

Deirdre Depew told the board on Feb. 13 that, when she visited her son, Andrew, at the middle school, she had felt at home as the school was welcoming and open. “It felt like a warm hug going in there,” she said. “I don’t feel that way coming into the high school.”

Several teachers had transitioned through the Comprehensive Skills class at the high school, Depew said, and parents had wanted to meet as a group with school staff to air concerns but were told they could meet only one-on-one as for an Individualized Educational Plan, or IEP.

The board’s president, Seema Rivera, said later that was because of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

At the March 5 meeting, Claire Depew, who attended the meeting with her parents and her brother, told the board of her brother, “Since last year, when he was in the middle school, I’ve seen his speech decrease and his overall attitude toward everyone ….

“He’s come home sad. When he was in the middle school with me, he came home happy every day …. Now he barely sees all of his friends that aren’t in self-contained classes.”

Nancy Marmet said her son, Alex, now a 10th-grader at the high school, had “done fabulous in elementary school with co-teaching” and she was shocked, as an educator for over 35 years, that there was no co-teaching at the middle school.

But, Marmet went on, she couldn’t say anything bad about the middle school. “They pulled it off. They did a tremendous job,” she said of the teachers taking on “yeoman’s work” and acting as co-teachers whenever they could.

“My son has cerebral palsy and has very slow cognitive processing,” Marmet said. “He gets it … He passed the social studies Regents last year …. The teachers go above and beyond and you are very fortunate to have them.”

Although there is co-teaching again at the high school for most of her son’s classes, Marmet said, when she asks about doing something differently, she said, “I’m always told, ‘No, this is what we have to offer.’ 

“Well, as a special-educator, to me, those words are wrong. Those words are almost evil because as cliché as it sounds, the ‘I’ in ‘IEP’ is for ‘individualized.’ We don’t push kids into programs we have. We make our programs work for our kids.”

She also said, “Parents should be partners … We have our students for life and we want them prepared for life. My son is a very chatty guy. He’s a very social guy.”

But, Marmet said, most of the time her son eats with a teaching assistant at school. “It’s not been since elementary school that anyone has ever asked him to do something outside of school,” she said. “And he would love to do that.”

She went on, “And, when I tried to get him to ask people, he’s like, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll want to do that with me.’”

While several parents praised the Unified sports program at Guilderland, which combines students with and without disabilities, they also noted such programs are outside of regular school hours.

Marmet concluded, “I don’t feel that inclusion is how I could categorize Guilderland …. It’s time for Guilderland special ed to bring parents in so that we can work as partners.”

Superintendent Marie Wiles told the board members at their March 12 meeting, that, by creating a third Comprehensive Skills section next year, “The hope is spreading those students out over three sections, recognizing the wide range of age levels that are served there, [ages] 14 to 22, will give us a lot more opportunity to meet those individual needs, customize the programs for those students as they age through the program and their journey here.”

Flag football

An enthusiastic flag football player and several parents had addressed the board on  Feb. 13 with many more speaking out on March 5 about the opportunities the sport offers to girls while also noting most of the other Suburban Council schools will have teams this spring or next.

The huge increase in flag football has been fueled by small grants from National Football League teams — in New York, from the Bills, the Jets, and the Giants — and the first state championships will be held this June in Cortland.

Superintendent Wiles had initially said, when flag football was requested on Feb. 13, “We felt it was fairest to our existing programs and to the overall process that we use to make really tough decisions about what ends up in the budget to put it in the queue for next year.”

On Tuesday, Wiles said, “The students who came last week with their tie-dyed flag-football jerseys were very persuasive. We are recognizing, if we don’t put this program into our budget for next year, our students will be one of the few in the Suburban Council who don’t have this opportunity.”

She also said, “We also want to assure the community that we’re paying attention to what they value.”

Other additions to the budget, overlooked in the first draft, are: $64,020 for custodial materials and contractual expenses and $10,000 to replace windows at the high school that were not replaced in the last capital project.

The budget proposal remains at $125 million and money for the budget is not coming from the fund balance. The tax levy is still under the state-set cap so a simple majority is needed to pass the budget on May 21.

Wiles said she was asked if the recent additions meant something else had to come out of the budget.

“The answer to that is, ‘no,’” she said.

“We have an increase in local revenue,” Assistant Superintendent for Business Andrew Van Alstyne explained. “Most of this comes from investment interest.”

Wiles highlighted other potential savings.

She said transportation costs could be “lowered significantly” due to a review in-district bus runs by Guilderland’s new transportation director, Craig Lipps.

Wiles also said Guilderland anticipates savings in BOCES costs because of billing changes in certain areas of special education.