GUILDERLAND — A gathering space with windows starting at the floor and reaching to a vaulted ceiling has three projector sites as big as movie screens. A music room with climate-controlled storage for instruments is alongside soundproof practice rooms. A library has cushioned hexagonal stools nestled beneath sculpted tables in front of a giant arched window.

These are among the features that six Guilderland School Board members saw last Saturday on a trip to the Queensbury Union Free School District in Warren County.

“They have looked at how students learn, how teaching and learning happens best in collaborative kinds of settings,” said Superintendent Marie Wiles as she projected pictures of the Queensbury tour at the Dec. 5 school board meeting.

The rural district with 3,500 students has four buildings on its campus — a school for kindergartners through third-graders, a school for fourth- and fifth-graders, a middle school, and a high school.

“They’ve been working on this for years,” said Wiles, noting that Queensbury, like Guilderland, had older buildings that had been upgraded. Most of Guilderland’s school buildings were constructed when the district centralized in 1950.

“The biggest part of that trip that I took away was just thinking how excited those students must be going into that building …,” said board member Kim Blasiak. “It was exciting, like we couldn’t wait to go to the next room to see what it was because it just kept getting better and better. And it was almost overwhelming thinking of how exciting the possibilities for those students are.”

“I found it inspiring,” said board member Blanca Gonzalez-Parker.

“The vision of making it better for the students was encompassed in every single detail,” said board member Rebecca Butterfield. “So luncheon tables were circular and not rectangular so kids wouldn’t feel excluded.

“Seats in the elementary school were like traditional seats but also some like balanced seats so kids could, like, wiggle and feel comfortable …. Windows were floor to ceiling because natural light is activating and makes people feel fresh when they go into a building.”

Wiles’s presentation was to make a pitch for Guilderland to form a task force to “focus on educational programming priorities and implications for our facilities,” she said — an idea the board embraced.

Wiles outlined what she termed an “aggressive” timeline for the “future-ready” task force. Task force members are to be appointed by the school board in January and are to share their recommendations with the board by the fall of 2024 with the goal of having a capital project referendum in May 2025.

Wiles started her presentation by reminding the board of the district’s mission: “To inspire all students to be active, lifelong learners, able to achieve at their highest potential in a demanding and ever-changing global community,” she said.

She went on, “We know, after all we’ve been through in recent years with the pandemic and so many changes to the way our world operates, that we have to have a conversation about how to prepare our children in order to do that.”

Wiles said this could be condensed to four words: To be future ready.

She went over the school board’s four priorities: to close the achievement or opportunity gap, to focus on the whole child, to focus on diversity, and facilities.

“We’ve just finished a capital project from 2019,” said Wiles. “We’re wrapping up another one in 2021.… It’s getting to be time for us to think about that again.”

She said after the presentation, “We’ve done a ton of infrastructure kinds of things — boilers and univentilators and plumbing … the kind you can’t really see. It’s time to make more visible changes, to impact the teaching and learning environment.” 

With facilities, Wiles said, the district “had two big goals”: supporting technology, including cybersecurity, and developing “a shared vision for future-ready facilities.”

Wiles proposed exploring what it means to be “future ready” both in terms of educational programming and “in terms of the space in which we do that.”

She envisions a large group of 35 or 40 people on the task force who will then be divided into smaller groups to consider various aspects of being future ready such as technology, music, and technical education.

“I can envision the task force planning and implementing community-engagement activities: ThoughtExchanges, forums, focus groups …,” said Wiles. “I can envision task force members taking field trips to neighboring school districts for ideas and inspiration.”

She said the group should “be as inclusive as possible,” naming parents, students, community members, representatives from each employee group, administrators, and board members.

“Tonight’s presentation,” said Wiles, “is an open invitation for people who are interested.”