GUILDERLAND — The public school district here has continued its years-long streak of receiving clean audits.

On Oct, 1, Jill M. Thaisz, a certified public accountant and partner at West & Company CPAs, walked the school board through the independent financial audit for the year ending June 30, 2024.

“That is the highest you can receive,” Thaisz told the board of the unmodified opinion.

The district’s largest liability, of about $223 million, is for post-employment benefits, Thaisz said, noting the state does not allow districts to set aside any money for the liability.

“Each year, you budget only the current year’s health-insurance bills, but you are required to record this liability for all of the future costs,” she said.

Thaisz also said, “This is the same for all of the other districts as well.”

The audit highlighted a decrease of approximately $4.7 million in net position on the district-wide financials “mainly due to an increase in pupil transportation, tax certiorari expenditures and long-term debt expenses.”

“You had just over six-and-a-half million dollars of proceeds from debt,” said Thaisz. “Those were the tax certiorari bonds that were issued during the year.”

Rather than making drastic cuts to its budget, Guilderland decided to take out bonds to pay the legally required funds due to businesses that had successfully challenged the assessments set by the town.

Voters passed the $125 million budget for 2024-25 in May with 70 percent of the vote.

“If you exclude the tax certiorari bonds, your revenues exceeded your expenses by about $600,000,” said Thaisz.

The report also noted that the school district’s total assessed valuation decreased by about $5.8 million or .01 percent in 2023-24, “showing a slight decrease from the prior year but indicating an overall stable tax base and economic stability.”

Thaisz noted that state law says school districts are not allowed to have more than 4 percent of next year’s budget in unassigned fund balance, or a rainy-day account.

“As of year end, you were exactly 4 percent and so you’re fine” she told the board.

An additional audit was performed because, with pandemic funds, Guilderland spent more than $750,000 of federal grant money.

“We found no issues of noncompliance or internal control issues for those two grant programs,” said Thaisz of the federal programs that were audited.

She noted, “In total, you spent just under $6 million of federal grant funding in 2023-24.”

Thaisz said of the COVID-19 funding, “Those grants have now ended — as of yesterday.”

The last section of the audit is for classroom activity funds, for student clubs, which totals just over $273,000.

As in years’ past, Guilderland received a “qualified opinion” for that.

“This is the same as last year and the same for all of our districts,” said Thaisz. “We can’t prove that all money raised is submitted to the central treasurer so you do receive a qualified opinion in this case.”

While the board had no comment or questions on Thaisz’s presentation, Superintendent Marie Wiles praised the business office “for yet another really outstanding year of a clean audit.”

This was despite turnover in the office. “It’s a lot of work,” said Wiles, “a lot of attention to detail.”

She thanked John Rizzo, the district’s school business administrator, and Andrew Van Alstyne, assistant superintendent for business as well as the auditors and the audit committee.

“This is no small feat to have a perfectly clean audit,” Wiles concluded.

Ban on smart devices

Guilderland will consider a ban on electronic devices as part of developing its budget for the 2025-26 school year, a process that Van Alstyne said has already begun.

Wiles told the board on Oct. 1 that the cost of implementing the system, which would include pouches for students to put their devices in, would cost about $110,000.

“We could weave this into the regular budget development process so the board would ultimately make the decision … when it adopts the budget in April,” said Wiles.

At their August meeting, board members had agreed to explore a ban after Governor Kathy Hochul launched her statewide listening tour on the subject at Guilderland.

Hochul, who favors a statewide ban, spoke at a convention in Albany in September hosted by New York State United Teachers, which also came out in favor of a ban.

Melinda Person, who is president of NYSUT and whose wife is vice president of the Guilderland board, has four children in Guilderland schools and wrote to the Guilderland board advocating for a ban on smartphones at school.

Two Guilderland board members, Tara Molloy-Grocki, a retired teacher, and Nina Kaplan, currently a teacher, attended the Albany conference and reported to the board on Oct. 1.

Molloy-Grocki said that, in August, she wasn’t sure she favored a ban but the conference, she said, “kind of pushed me over the line.”

Kaplan had been a proponent for a ban in August and this month advocated for it with the board.

“The support is there,” she said, noting Hochul’s stance and that of other stakeholders. “The science is there. And we even heard some tragic stories that I don’t think there was a dry eye at that point in the room.”

 Wiles had told The Enterprise earlier, when asked about the possibility of a statewide ban on smartphones in schools, “I would prefer that we arrive at a decision like we arrive at most decisions, which is by engaging our community, getting feedback, providing information and insight, and then moving forward rather than, ‘Well, we have to do it.’”

The plan now is to hold a forum, possibly online, that features a panel, which would include representatives from neighboring school districts, like Bethlehem and Schoharie, that have already banned devices as well as representatives from the Guilderland Police Department to discuss safety and security issues. Also, community and staff are to be surveyed as well as students.

While the board, in August, had been largely supportive of a ban, Kimberly Blasiak had raised concerns about “implementation and discipline,” and Rebecca Butterfield, a pediatrician, had said, while she totally agreed about the mental-health crisis, especially for middle-school students, she wanted more feedback from stakeholders about high school students.

“Part of our mission is to make students future-ready,” Butterfield had said, “and cell phones are part of that. They will be using cell phones in their lives …. We have to kind of have an open mind about the developmental stages of adolescence.”

At the Oct. 1 meeting, board President Blanca Gonzalez-Parker said she had not fully made up her mind on the issue. “I haven’t formed a full opinion,” she said.

Gonzalez-Parker, who works in public health, said she had some questions and concerns about older students. “There’s this balance,” she said. “You know, in the real world there are cell phones, so do they need to learn to use them responsibly, etc.”

Also, Meredith Brière, who was sworn in at the start of the Oct. 1 meeting to fill a vacant seat, asked about how exceptions would be made.

She asked why one student would get an exception over another “because I think the issue of fairness comes into that,” she said.

Molloy-Grocki responded that exceptions were made in other districts for students with medical conditions, like diabetes, with the student having a doctor’s note and going through the school nurse.

“We’ll work on putting something together for the fall,” concluded Wiles of hosting an informational forum.