While parents and speech therapists told the school board about the feared consequences of cutting a part-time post, the superintendent says student needs wil still be met.

ALTAMONT — The congressman, in a black overcoat and shiny shoes, bent down to touch a pile of rusty and broken pipes outside the cement-block well house on Gun Club Road. The wind was chill and the gray sky held snow on the first day of spring as a bevy of local officials clustered about Paul Tonko.

Jeffrey Moller, Altamont’s superintendent of public works, wearing a jacket with his name on it and work boots, had gathered the pipes to illustrate for the congressman some of what was underground in the village.

Mothers, teachers, and school leaders all lauded a program that, for Guilderland, has a 65-percent success rate of teaching struggling first-graders to read in fewer than 20 weeks.

The three women up for re-election on Guilderland's school board are citing personal rather than political reasons as each decides whether or not to seek another term.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," the school board president, Barbara Fraterrigo said, instructing administrators to find someone to teach another sixth-grade Italian class.

The Guilderland Players discover both truth and silliness in this weekend's musical comedy with a back-stage murder mystery.

As Roger Spencer's grave was being dug, a far-off cousin called the funeral home to have Spencer buried near his mother in Schenectady under a stone bearing his name and birth date.

Miss Siggy, a social service dog, has helped social worker Catherine Ricchetti in the Guilderland schools for over a decade; soon she'll be joined by five puppies

FEURA BUSH — Rodolfo Rios, 52, of Feura Bush, attempted to rob an Albany bank two months after being released for armed robbery of a different Albany bank.

The school board dealt with a potpourri of issues Tuesday, mulling tax breaks, appointing a task force to look at re-purposing excess space, and applauding the middle school for being redisgnated a School to Watch.