A Farnsworth Middle School custodian was charged with rape; police said a 14-year-old girl was the victim. The school district superintendent said that the victim was a student at the middle school, that the alleged incidents occurred off school grounds, and that social media played a role.

Superintendent Marie Wiles, in answering questions from the board and the public about her draft budget on March 15, said that the nearly 5-percent spending increase and the nearly 3-percent tax increase “are the highest they've been in my time here” as she stressed the importance of “balance” in not overburdening taxpayers.

Both the state’s health commissioner and governor on Monday emphasized two main courses of action in dealing with the latest Omicron sub-lineage: People should get vaccinated, including booster shots, and people should immediately be tested for COVID-19 so they can be treated to stem the spread.

The two companies producing a messenger RNA vaccine against COVID-19 — Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech — have asked the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization for a second booster shot.

WESTERLO — Trevor Burnside knows that doing the small things right leads to doing the big things better.

In this week’s Enterprise podcast, Burnside describes the sound of each member of a platoon pulling forward the bolt on their rifles at the exact same time.

“You can only hear one sound … It is awesome,” he said.

“Character is more than simply individual achievement,” Lisa Knowles, Guilderland’s director of pupil services, told the school board on Tuesday. “It is the intersection of our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior.”

GUILDERLAND —  WS Development will assume management, operation, and majority ownership of Stuyvesant Plaza, Ed Swyer, president of Stuyvesant Plaza Inc., announced in a release on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Governor Kathy Hochul quietly extended for another month the pandemic state of emergency she had declared on Feb. 14, set to end March 16. The shortened declaration, which says, “New York continues to experience COVID-19 transmission, with the rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions remaining at over 100 new admissions a day,” runs through April 15.

Given the low community level of COVID-19, as set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Superintendent Marie Wiles recommended, based on the board’s September resolution, vaccination or weekly testing no longer be required for student athletes to play high-risk sports.

Before voting to approve the nine-page memorandum of agreement on March 8, board member Rebecca Butterfield asked for data on the SRO, saying she would like to know what he does on a daily basis and what actions have been taken on criminal matters.