GUILDERLAND — Superintendent Marie Wiles on Tuesday laid out a $57 million proposal to make the district’s schools “future ready.”

If the board accepts the conceptual plan in March, CSArch, the architects the district has been working with, will draw up plans ahead of a May 20 public vote.

The $57, 259,705 in upgrades would affect all seven school buildings: Guilderland High School, Farnsworth Middle School, and the five neighborhood elementary schools.

“This has been a long road,” Wiles told the school board in a broadcast session as she noted "facilities" was one of the board’s four priorities adopted in 2020.

Fifty members of a Future-Ready Task Force, appointed by the board in 2024, studied five areas: elementary programs; secondary science, technology, engineering, arts, and math; secondary humanities; performing arts; and gathering spaces.

In September, the school board appointed a facilities committee that worked through a 13-page spreadsheet, Wiles said, designating upgrades in three priority levels, finally reaching a consensus on the top priorities.

Wiles had said earlier this month, at a Guilderland Chamber of Commerce event, that, while the Guilderland schools have top-notch staff, facilities are outdated.

She told the school board on Feb. 11, “This is the first project that will need to take place over many years to transform our facilities into the future-ready environments that they need to be. So this is the start of the conversation, not a one and done.”

Wiles also said, “We really need to think about the cost implications for the people in our community who make all of this possible.”

In December, the public library in the neighboring town of Bethlehem had a $37 million bond issue, which the library described as a 50-year ask, soundly defeated.

Wiles said that 75 percent of the Guilderland school proposal would be eligible for state aid.

“At this point,” she said, “we’re estimating the tax impact for our community to be 2.8 percent … We’re going to continue working on that. Honestly, we like to get it a little bit lower.”

For a taxpayer with the average assessed house in the district, at $283,500, that would translate into roughly $153 more in taxes annually.

Proposed upgrades

Wiles described a half-dozen areas that would be improved if the referendum passes:

— Safety

“Safety and security is always critical to us,” Wiles said. Door-access controls would be “state of the art,” she said.

“Comunication is also a tremendous part of our safety plan,” Wiles said. The exterior public-address speakers would be replaced with internet protocol speakers.

Also, video surveillance cameras would be replaced.

— Infrastructure

Old roofs would be replaced, most notably at Farnsworth Middle School. 

“HVAC is a huge part of this project,” said Wiles of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.

Asbestos, she said, is always abated whenever a wall is opened and it is exposed.

Also, the plan includes lifts for bus maintenance.

— Site work

Parking lots would be repaved and athletic fields, including the middle-school football field and the high school softball field, would be improved.

Also, the former district office in front of the middle school, once part of the original golfing venue on the site, would be demolished.

— Tech upgrades

“We need to have equity in our classrooms,” said Wiles. “We have 100 classrooms across the district that do not yet have Promethean boards.” Promethean boards are interactive whiteboards that also function as projectors.

Technology closets would be upgraded. “These are the heartbeat of teaching and learning in the 21st Century,” said Wiles.

Also the virtualization system nodes will be upgraded. “This is kind of the nervous system of our technology work,” Wiles explained. “This connects all of the servers that keep our software and hardware running.”

— Future-ready classrooms

“This is refurbishing classrooms to make them places where students can engage in collaborative learning, where there are flexible learning spaces, where students can see, where they have access to data — comfortable engaging learning environments.”

She itemized which classrooms at various schools would be updated and said a “breakout learning area” at Pine Bush Elementary School would be a pilot.

Also, the high school’s large-group instruction room would become a “multi-purpose instructional performance meeting space.”

The high school library would maintain traditional shelving with books on its perimeter but the center space could be easily reconfigured for meetings and gatherings.

— Performance arts

Complaints from parents and students about the cramped quarters for Guilderland’s music program, for which students have to move with their instruments to space on the high school stage that they share with theater students, is part of what led to considering upgrades.

An addition to the high school building is planned to house the music program, with the current music space being repurposed for technology space, a nurses’ suite, and special-education classrooms as well as band and music rooms.

“We know there are needs to support this very successful, ever-growing, very accomplished program that we are so lucky to have here in Guilderland,” said Wiles.

The planned addition, she said, would “allow for the creation of a new coral room, a new orchestra room, additional practice rooms, and instrument storage.”

Initially, Wiles said, a $4.1 charging station, which would have served about 20 electric school buses, had been considered a top priority.

“The long-term financing for electric school buses is uncertain,” said Wiles, “as is the timeline for when we will be mandated to have nothing but electric buses.”

Since the district has the capacity to serve the 11 electric buses it hopes to have next year, Wiles said, “This infrastructure upgrade can wait.”

She concluded, “That enables us to do some upgrades that will have a more immediate impact on the teaching and learning experiences of our children.”