GUILDERLAND — The school district here is planning a $17.4 million capital project to upgrade its seven school buildings. The school board is to vote on the proposal on July 27, with the project going to public vote next fall.

At the same time, the district is deciding how to spend federal funds allocated to schools across the nation to make up for expenses related to the pandemic.

“It’s one-time-only money,” said Superintendent Marie Wiles of the federal funds. “It will spread over multiple years but, once it’s gone, it’s gone …,” she told the school board members at their July 1 meeting.

“We have to be really careful that they are costs that are not recurring … We don’t want to create something only to dismantle it,” she said.

Wiles went over the results of a ThoughtExchange in which 1,107 people participated online, rating, on a scale of 1 to 5, how they thought the federal funds should be spent.

“Infrastructure was huge,” Wiles said, noting that the results are posted on the district’s website.

Districts have to submit a draft plan for federal spending by July 15.

Guilderland is getting $4.6 million from Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, to cover expenses from March 13, 2020, at the start of the pandemic, to Sept. 30, 2022. From the American Rescue Plan, Guilderland is being allocated $2.8 million to cover the period from March 13, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2023.

Allowable uses for the $7.4 million in federal funds include addressing learning lost during the pandemic; providing mental-health supports for students; after-school and summer learning programs; activities to help low-income students and students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethic minorities, homeless students, and foster-care youth; hardware and software for remote or hybrid learning; purchasing cleaning supplies or personal protective equipment; air quality and ventilation improvements; improving preparedness efforts and coordination; and planning for school closures.

After programmatic and student-based needs are addressed —for instance, academic and social and emotional struggles caused by the pandemic — the district will ask: “What’s left over that we could apply to the project?” Wiles said.

The $17 million plan

Guilderland is still in the midst of completing improvements from a $31 million bond that voters passed in 2019, following the defeat of a bond issue in 2018. The cost was reduced by 28 percent, from $42.7 million to $30.6 million.

“The district’s approach is to do small projects on a more frequent basis — every five to six years,” said Clifford Nooney, the district’s director of physical plant management. He contrasted that with districts that put up less frequent capital projects, costing $100 million or more: “You really get sticker shock ..,” he said. “You do not get the same quality.”

The tax impact of Guilderland’s $17.4 million project is estimated at 22 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. The median assessment for a Guilderland home is $299,000, which would pay $64 per year if the bond passed.

For every $500,000 in federal funds applied to the project, the median homeowner would pay about a dollar less in taxes annually.

If the referendum passes, it is expected construction would begin in October 2022 and end in August 2024.

A committee was formed to assess facility needs by looking at improvements that were included in the 2018 referendum but not included in the 2019 plan that passed. A subcommittee also met to consider installing a turf playing field at the high school.

Nooney went over, building by building, proposed improvements, all of which are detailed on the district’s website. Upgrading playgrounds and replacing faulty windows were among the improvements at several of the district’s seven schools — five elementary schools, as well as the high school and middle school.

During the hot September of 2017, Nooney said, fiberglass windows installed at the high school in 2007 “popped out of the track, fell in the classroom and broke.” The repair, he said, involved “little cheesy plastic clips.”

“This will end up in court,” Nooney said, adding, “I think we should replace it in this project.”

All of the windows in each school were checked last year to be sure each one could open, he said.

One of the major focuses in the $17.4 million plan is on instructional technology. Nooney screened a video on Promethean boards. A 75-inch screen at the front of a classroom, the Promethean board allows students, each with a device, seated at their desks to work collaboratively, interacting with each other and displaying their work on the large board.

Currently, 40 Guilderland classrooms have Promethean boards. The proposal would add another 150, for a total of 190, which is about half of the classrooms in the district.

Natalia LeMoyne, the district’s coordinator for instructional technology, said teachers were surveyed on their technology needs. “Everyone wants one,” she said of Promethean boards. “They make learning seamless,” she said, noting the district is “close to one-to-one,”meaning almost every student has a device like a Chromebook.

“We have come to a crossroads with projector-based technology,” said LeMoyne.

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Demian Singleton agreed that projector-based technology was outdated and said that Guilderland’s projector systems were at an “end of life” stage.

Another proposed tech initiative would make district data more secure. Guilderland suffered a cyberattack in the spring.

“Virtualization will increase security of our data,” said Nooney, reading from a statement. “It makes managing and monitoring our data faster and more efficient, in turn allowing for faster response to incidents, better security of our data by isolating it and by adding storage space for redundancy backup in case of a cyberattack.”

Nooney interpreted, “I kind of took it as, if this little box gets attacked, you can isolate it.”

While the pandemic forced all schools to focus on remote learning, it also led the Guilderland committee to propose building outdoor pavilions at each school, 24 by 48 feet, for open-cair classrooms. After an initial refusal from the State Education Department, Nooney said he will pursue state iad for these proposed pavilions.

While the capital proposal totals $17,442,474, an additional $2.5 million is proposed for a track and turf field. The turf field would replace the current grass field, surrounded by the track at the high school, and would be used for football, field hockey, and boys’ and girls’ lacrosse and soccer, Nooney said. The turf field and track project would be done under state contract, Nooney said.

If the proposition passes, Nooney said, $448,000 is already included for delayed work on the playing field and track, which would become contingency.

Since bids on the current capital project came in lower than expected, Nooney said, the committee recommended spending the $1 million to $1.2 million to replace four aging boilers at elementary schools.

“The money’s there,” he said.

Several school board members — President Seema Rivera as well as members Rebecca Butterfield and Blanca Gonzalez-Parker — wanted to include air-conditioning in the proposal, mindful of the importance of filtering air during the pandemic. This is one of the uses allowed for the federal funding.

The cost for air-conditioning a single classroom could range from $7,000 to $12,000, Nooney said. He also said that classrooms with special-needs students get top priority for air-conditioning.

Nooney said he would provide the school board members with a map that may surprise them, delineating the rooms that are currently air-conditioned.

Other business

In other business on July 1, the school board:

— Unanimously re-elected Seema Rivera as president and Gloria Towle-Hilt as vice president, while Rivera, Gonzalez-Parker and newcomer Nathan Sabourin took the oath of office;

— Heard from Wiles that, after Guilderland was “unexpectedly” allocated $640,000 from the state for pre-kindergarten classes, it put out a request for proposals — since there is no space in-house for the new program — and plans to award a contract at the end of the month;

— Heard from Towle-Hilt that school librarians are concerned that library clerks were cut from the budget in 2011, hampering librarians’ work. Towle-Hilt said librarians “play such a crucial role, not only with students but collaboratively with staff,” and recommended seriously considering reinstating clerks in the 2022-23 budget. Wiles said that would cost about $250,000;

— Similarly, heard from Gonzalez-Parker that she would like Guilderland to return to having a school resource officer, in both the middle school and high school. The current single officer, a member of the Guilderland Police Department, she reported, says he doesn’t have time to engage with students as much as he’d like;

— Heard from Wiles that the district is waiting for guidance from the state on whether or not schools will be required to provide remote learning next year. If so, she said, it would probably be done through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services. Gonzalez-Parker said she thinks the district needs to prepare for people who are not comfortable being vaccinated.

The meeting had opened with a public comment from the stepfather of a student whose biological father won’t let her get vaccinated; he urged the school to require it. Wiles responded that is up to the state and not in the district’s purview; and

— Wiles also responded to a complaint from a parent that the Y’s Time, an after-school program run by the Guilderland YMCA, that had been held at Lynnwood Elementary School last year, would not be held there in 2021-22. Wiles said the limited space at Lynnwood wouldn’t allow it. Last year, there was space because band, orchestra, and intramurals were not offered.