GUILDERLAND — Marie Wiles, Guilderland’s superintendent for 14 years, said that her last school board meeting, on June 10, “captured the beauty of democracy.”

“People could say what was on their minds, raise their concerns, prompt further discussion, investigation, whatever on our part,” she told The Enterprise this week.

“It was also a meeting where we celebrated some of the outstanding things that are happening in Guilderland,” she went on. “We celebrated our athletes. We heard from our middle school about some really innovative science instruction that’s going on … It’s the whole array of things that are important in the school district ….

“It’s not always easy. It’s sometimes hard to sit on the other side of that table and have to listen to things that we’re not maybe doing as well as everyone would like us to … We have to be willing to listen, willing to look hard at ourselves, and willing to continue to try to get better as we go along. I’m proud to be part of that process.”

The board bid a fond farewell to Wiles and to its longest-serving member, Gloria Towle-Hilt, a retired middle-school teacher, who did not seek re-election after 18 years on the board.

Peter Stapleton joined the board, having come in fourth in the June board elections.

Students shine

The meeting opened with a showcase of students on the spring season sectional championship teams and the athletes who had qualified for state competition.

Next up were Tyler Lutjen and Jon Ouckama, teachers in Guilderland High School’s Teacher Corps program where students learn about teaching and then put what they’ve learned into action, teaching Westmere Elementary students about bullying prevention, self esteem, decision-making, diversity, and digital literacy.

“This was a transformative experience for this group of students,” said Ouckama, “and we could not have been prouder and more impressed with this first cohort of Teacher Corps students.”

Three pairs of Teacher Corps students then presented their capstone projects to the board.

Abby Rudolph and Jordan Smith “discovered using technology safely is of major importance,” said Rudolph. The internet — “a powerful tool that allows students to have access to diverseculturalperspective, creative inspirationand collaboration with others” — can also be dangerous and harmful, she said.

“We propose that elementary students have digital literacy forms formally integrated into their regular curriculum …,” said Smith. “We need to empower students in the Guilderland Central School District to be positive and active members of the digital world.”

Madisyn Kowalchyk and Ava McTiernen examined the decrease in students’ attention spans, which they said has decreased by two-thirds in recent years.

“A child’s attention span is supposed to be two to three times our numerical age,” said Kowalchyck, “which means that a kindergarten-age child should have an attention span of 15 minutes but that number has decreased to around nine minutes.”

McTiernan said they recommended keeping kindergarten lessons to 15 minutes at the start of the year, increasing the time as focus increases.

“At the middle- and high-school level,” she said, “we think the most effective solution is phasing out strict lecture classes,” during which most students check out at 30 minutes, she said.

She also recommended students hand write class notes to improve memorization.

Finally, Emily Maguire and Emma McCoy looked at the stigma faced by special-education students.

“There is a limited interaction between general-education students and special-education students,” said McCoy. “That’s a problem. The introduction of special education is often in a negative light.”

When they taught Westmere students, Maguire said, “We discussed the power of kind words and showed our students how unkind words have a lasting impact by having them crumple up their paper hearts to represent the effects our words have.”

She also said, “During one of our final lessons at Westmere, a student asked us, ‘Why is my cousin, who has Down syndrome, not in a classroom with people like me?’

“This innocent question from a 9-year-old led us to designing and incorporating equity into another lesson in their classroom,” she said. “If teachers continue to push away questions like this, the stigma will only grow.”

Stipends questioned

A student and four teachers addressed the board about their concerns with stipends for teachers who serve as advisors.

The student president of this year’s National Art Honor Society expressed concern that defunding for that and a music honor society is “telling both performing and visual arts students that what they do isn’t worth recognition …. Shouldn’t we be celebrating students who excel in areas outside core subjects?” she asked the board.

High school English teacher Andy Maycock, who has worked on theatrical shows at the school for 30 years, said the stipend for advising the Guilderland Players has been the same for five years.

Advisors were surprised to learn that “the overall pot of money for all co-curricular stipends was staying the same,” meaning stipends at the high school and middle school are being reduced in order to include stipends for elementary school advisors for the first time.

“There’s no reason they should simply donate their time,” said Maycock of the elementary-school teachers while asserting that more money should be allotted for the stipends.

“I’m discouraged that I’ve kept track of my nearly minimum-wage hours for several years only to discover that the result is the opposite of what I expected — that my work and everyone’s work has less value than we thought,” said Mayock to applause.

Similarly, Erin McNamara spoke on behalf of the three yearbook advisors, which are to be cut to two. She went over the detailed work involved to “create a quality product which is affordable to our population” and which becomes a keepsake for students for the rest of their lives.

She named the awards the Tawasentha has earned and told the board, “Please try to imagine our surprise and concern when we learned of the plan to eliminate one of our advisor positions.”

Wiles responded that the honor societies for art and music have not been defunded and said, “The source of the dollars is different than the co-curricular funds.”

“I don’t believe that we as a board were notified or voted on the decisions made by the co-curricular committee,” said board President Blanca Gonzalez-Parker. “I’m a little surprised to learn of some of these things.”

Wiles explained that the co-curricular committee is “established within the bargaining unit between the school district and the teachers’ association.”

The committee uses rubrics to determine how much each co-curricular club advisor is paid. “For years,” she said, “there have been no stipends at all at the elementary level … The pot of money is part of the budget development process.”

With two positions at each of the five elementary schools, 10 more stipends were needed, said Wiles, which “meant shifting some of the funds from other stipend areas.”

Wiles concluded, telling the board, “At this time, we do not have any mechanism to add additional funds to a budget.”

“Couldn’t this have been anticipated?” asked board member Rebecca Butterfield.

“I guess the answer is ‘yes,’” responded Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Regan Johnson. “That could have been anticipated.”

He went on, “Remember what we did during budget this year where we had huge increases. We didn’t add anything but what was mandated in special education and health insurance.”

“The committee is still working,” Wiles told the board, “and I’m sure they’re hearing this feedback tonight. And we’ll take it into consideration and think about moving forward.”

“Maybe it’s just a matter of waiting until we can add to the pot of money,” said Gonzalez-Parker.

Wiles told The Enterprise this week that the amount the district has budgeted for all co-curricular salaries next year is $216,900.

She also explained that advisors are divided into five categories for pay. An advisor in the first group, on the first of three steps, earns $700. An advisor in the fifth group on the top, third step earns $3,800.

She said the rubric looks at time commitment, whether or not you need to do this work during vacation time or weekends, the number of weekday hours, the students involved, how much fiscal management there is, how much supervision and coordination there is, visibility and accountability, and mitigating factors.

“It’s very complicated,” said Wiles.

Wiles also explained the change in leadership for the music and art honor societies.

To save money during the budget-development process, Wiles said, “We collapsed our supervisor for art with our supervisor of music and created a supervisor of fine arts, and created two teacher-leader positions to assist the administrator in that role.”

So, she explained, the honor societies for art and music are to be led by the teacher leaders rather than through stipends. “So there’s money behind it,” said Wiles, “but it’s coming from the teacher-leader perspective as opposed to the advisories.”

This was a way to “free up some of the money in the overall co-curriculum pool to create the new ones at the elementary level.”

Remedial help conflicts with core lessons

The board heard next from a couple, the McCanns, with three children in the school district. Their daughter, a student at Pine Bush Elementary School, received remedial reading help, they said, during the time her classmates were given science lessons.

“Jenny was crying over how badly she was going to do on the state test in science,” her mother said, “as she had been pulled from class for reading help four days a week during the time that science is almost always scheduled.”

She described her daughter as “a strong kid who was positive and excited about almost everything.”

The McCanns concluded this is a district-wide problem and said, “This has been falling on deaf ears.”

Wiles told The Enterprise this week that Guilderland’s five elementary schools have the shortest day of any in the Suburban Council.

“The reality is, there is very little time during the school day other than lunch and recess when there isn’t instruction going on in the classroom in some content areas ….,” said Wiles. “It’s the downside of offering pull-out intervention services.”

Wiles went on, “We hear and understand the concerns of this particular family … We just had a leadership team meeting yesterday where we were talking about how we can see if we can make this better …. perhaps by doing more push-in intervention as opposed to pull-out intervention.”

While she sympathizes with the McCanns’ worries, Wiles said, “It’s not a new thing. Our elementary principals struggle mightily to find ways to get students extra help without having an impact on the rest of their day. But you can’t be in two places at one time.”

Asked about making the elementary school day longer to fit in more, Wiles noted that, because Guilderland uses its school buses for three different levels — elementary, middle school, and high school — “it would have an impact across all three levels.”

She noted the problems the district has with its spread-out geography and heavy traffic.

Asked about after-school help for remedial students, Wiles said, “We have late buses available for our older students, not for the younger students. Also, after-school time is when we do chorus and band and orchestra and intramurals. So we wouldn’t want to eliminate opportunities for students after school  to participate in those things.”

She concluded, “It truly is conundrum.”

Communication

Finally, the board heard from parent Timothy Burke whose neurodivergent son is a three-sport athlete.

Burke had lavish praise for various school administrators and coaches who have helped his son.

“I really want to thank all the people that are part of his world, that make it better,” he said. “And there are a lot of them.”

However, Burke also said, “Tonight was the lacrosse banquet. My son is not there.”

He said lacrosse is his son’s favorite sport “and the coaches have been nothing short of impossible … Bullying to my child goes back a decade. High school has only gotten worse.”

He also said of his son, “He’s ostracized because no one talks to him.”

Burke said the athletic director had not responded to his concerns. “I went to Marie,” he said of Wiles. “She assures me the athletic director is going to get back to me. No one gets back to me …. Somebody needs to be held accountable.”

Burke said he felt he had to address the board but worried his son would feel the repercussions.

He said he asked his son, “Will you be all right with more kids not talking to you?”

His son responded, “They already don’t talk to me.”

Burke concluded, “It is disappointing to be here and, because I’m here, it’s probably going to get worse. But how much worse can it be than not feeling welcome at your own banquet?”

“I hear he is concerned,” Wiles told The Enterprise this week. “The part that I would like to work through is really the communication part."

She said she would get the athletic director together with the coach and parents “and let everyone say what’s on their mind and talk through the concerns with an eye toward making things better for next year …. That’s what needs to happen.”