The second phase of Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s $15.8 million project has been completed, and Superintendent Timothy Mundell reports that, now halfway through, the project is on schedule and slightly under budget. 

Although its absentee rate is roughly half that of the state average, Berne-Knox-Westerlo’s school board is considering ways to further cut the rate of chronic absenteeism, which is when a student misses 10-percent of classes in a school year. Chronic absenteeism is one of three critical metrics for Harvard’s National Center for Rural Education Research Networks, of which BKW is a part. 

Despite first appearances, Westerlo’s “new” zoning law is not an overhaul of the original 1989 document, but a necessary update that keeps the town in favor with New York State.

Soon after Westerlo authorized the use of NYCLASS as an investment vehicle, the Berne-Knox-Westerlo Board of Education followed suit, and the towns of Knox and Berne have expressed interest in the mutual fund. So what is it? 

At a special meeting held Feb. 21, members of the Knox Town Board and Amy Pokorny discussed details of a solar farm they hope to build with grant money as the deadline by which to use that money looms. “Let’s keep moving forward,” Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis said at the meeting. “That’s the goal.”

Just two weeks past his controversial appointment as Berne’s dog control officer, Jody Jansen allegedly threatened to call the police on a woman who had found a dog and was attempting to locate its owners through social media. 

The Knox Town Board authorized the purchase of new lights for the town’s baseball field, which will be the first improvement to come out of grant money from New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Clean Energy Communities program.

Chantelle Nobis, a Hilltown native who now lives near Rome, New York, is fighting to develop better treatments for neurofibromatosis, a rare and vaguely understood genetic disorder that afflicts both her husband and daughter.

Outrage and partisanship may have left their high-water mark in Berne, where dozens of residents attended the latest town board meeting to hammer the new council with questions and comments about the illegal removal of town employees from their positions, among other issues. Many of the residents’ remarks were met with eye rolls from the mostly GOP-backed board who, for the first time in decades, can steam ahead unimpeded by Democrats’ desires. 

At its abbreviated Feb. 11 town meeting, the Knox Town Board passed a law that will allow hog farming in the town’s agricultural districts and nearly passed an update to its home occupation laws, but had to table the matter on account of technical difficulties.