GUILDERLAND — Next year’s budget loomed on the edges of discussion at the Guilderland School Board’s Jan. 31 meeting.

The middle school principal, Michael Laster, spoke of plans for grouping students that would have budget implications.

Board member Judy Slack relayed a recommendation from the business-practices committee, to take a wait-and-see approach on tax breaks for volunteer first responders.

The superintendent, Marie Wiles, reported on her colleagues’ legislative lobbying priorities.

And board member Gloria Towle-Hilt said the communication committee is discussing ways to engage the public in the budget process.

Towle-Hilt had reported at the Jan. 10 meeting on the voter turnout for the May 2022 budget vote. Guilderland school district residents vote at the elementary school that serves their area. 

Those in the Altamont area had the highest turnout at just 26 percent of eligible voters, followed by Pine Bush at 20 percent, Lynnwood at 19 percent, Guilderland at 17 percent, and Westmere at 14 percent.

At its December meeting, the school board had learned a rollover budget for next year would total $118 million, up from $110 million this year. That represents a roughly 7 percent increase in spending, which, with additional state aid, would result in a tax levy increase of 2.2 percent.

At that Dec. 6 meeting, the board also heard a complaint from a resident that the ThoughtExchange was “unkind and unhelpful.” In recent years, the district has used the anonymous online ThoughtExchange to gauge community priorities in building its budget.

The board then discussed other ways of involving the community. For decades, Guilderland had a Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee that met regularly for months each year, hearing from and questioning different school administrators in open sessions that, in later years, were televised.

After that, recalled Towle-Hilt, the board’s longest serving member, “community conversations” were set up. “We couldn’t get people to come out ….,” said Towle-Hilt. “We weren’t getting the input we wanted.”

Wiles noted that, during the recession in 2010, the meeting hall would be packed with people who wanted to talk about priorities as drastic budget cuts were being made. “Over time, people stopped coming,” she said.

Going forward, Towle-Hilt suggested focus groups “so we can hear and give people a voice.”

At the Jan. 31 meeting, Towle-Hilt said her committee is discussing holding online focus groups after Wiles presents the draft budget in March.

She suggested the groups could be facilitated by building principals but Wiles said it would be hard for principals to be objective and suggested using facilitators from the Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

Towle-Hilt also said the committee was discussing using social media to highlight “what the budget actually does” which would “help tell the story of how the district serves our children.”

Staff, she said, would have to share the posts.

Also, Towle-Hilt said, the district’s eight-page newsletter, currently being assembled to be mailed to all district residents, will include accomplishments in music and sports and highlights from all of the school buildings.

No break for first responders

Last year, Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill that allows local taxing jurisdictions to offer a property tax break to volunteer firefighters and volunteer ambulance workers.

The state legislation enables taxing jurisdictions to provide up to a 10-percent exemption for a period of between two and five years for volunteer first responders whose primary residence is located in that jurisdiction.

Slack told the school board on Jan. 31 that the business practices committee recommended waiting rather than moving ahead with a tax break for first responders.

“It’s a very hard decision as I think it is for everyone because we respect these people,” said Slack. “We honor their work because we wouldn’t be the type of community we are without them but, because our budget situation is very uncertain, it felt to all of us reluctantly that we would like to wait this time before we grant this exemption on their taxes.”

Wiles said the town of Guilderland was considering it “down the road.”

At the Jan. 17 Guilderland Town Board meeting, Supervisor Peter Barber said, “The goal of the legislation is to provide an incentive for both getting more volunteers, but also retaining members.”

Guilderland’s proposed local law is based on Albany County’s law, which is based on the amount of service a volunteer has, which in turn is based on a point system of activities performed by a firefighter or a member of an ambulance corps. 

Councilwoman Rosemary Centi noted, “It’s not a great savings unless the school districts and towns are on board along with the county.”

At the school board’s Jan. 31 meeting, board member Blanca Gonzalez-Parker said she hopes the town will “do what it can. Having been a volunteer emergency medical technician herself, Gonzalez-Parker said, “They’ve missed holiday, they’ve risked their lives … It needs to be recognized in some way.”

Kelly Person, the school board’s vice president, said of the tax break, “It doesn't decrease the amount we’d get from taxes. It just puts the burden on other taxpayers.”

FMS dilemma

Laster gave context for a perennial problem at Farnsworth Middle School. The school has about a third of its eighth-graders “accelerate” each year, taking a high school math course, algebra, or a high school science course, biology, instead of the eighth-grade courses.

Laster said this creates a dissonance with the middle-school philosophy of heterogeneous teaming.

“Every year, we would have to move kids,” he said. Moving the accelerated students was less problematic, he said, than moving the non-accelerated students needed to balance the teams.

Typically the team members had stayed together for all three years of middle school.

Since 2017, a committee has studied the transition between middle school and high school and found “kids that moved had more peer connections when they came out of the middle school and then, when they came to the high school, they knew more kids,” Laster said.

On the other hand, students who had never moved from their initial team sometimes walked into high school classes “and didn’t know a soul,” Laster said.

A three-year pilot program was started in 2019 but was interrupted by the pandemic.

“This past year, we went from 14 to 16 sections at the eight-grade level,” said Laster since enrollment had grown. “In addition, we welcomed all of those remote learners back to that cohort.”

Prior to the pilot program, Laster said, he averaged 10 to 20 meetings each summer with parents upset about eighth-grade placement … I haven’t had a summer meeting since.”

Laster is asking for 16 sections at all three middle-school grades next year. Reducing class size for eighth-graders, going from 14 to 16 sections, cost an additional $220,400 in the current year’s budget.

Supers’ priorities

Wiles reported that the superintendents from the Capital Region BOCES districts met with elected officials on Jan. 27 to discuss legislative priorities for 2023.

After that, Governor Kathy Hochul presented her executive budget, which answered some of those priorities.

All 24 school districts, Wiles said, were united in their support of four priorities.

First is fully funding Foundation Aid and expense-driven aids, which the governor has in her budget.

The superintendents had a second priority of streamlining funding for universal prekindergarten programs and providing enrollment preferences in lotteries to students who are economically disadvantaged.

“We’re not asking for more money for pre-K,” Wiles stressed, but rather are asking for statutory changes that would allow poor families to have an edge in getting their children placed in the programs.

Third, the local superintendents want support for community mental-health services as opposed to school services. “We absolutely need more capacity to serve school-age” patients, said Wiles.

Across the 24 local districts, she said, 150 students have needed hospitalization and right now 20 are waiting for beds; the need is “constant,” Wiles said.

Finally, the superintendents are concerned about the 2027 deadline for electric school buses, which Wiles said was “around the corner.”

Other business

In other business, the school board at its Jan. 31 meeting:

—  Authorized Wiles to execute a memorandum of agreement between the Guilderland Central School District and the Guilderland Teachers’ Association and Kerry Dineen;

— Heard from Assistant Superintendent for Business Andrew Van Alstyne that Guilderland received a fiscal stress level rating of “No Designation” from the state comptroller’s office based on data from the 2021-22 school year. This is the eighth year in a row that Guilderland has received the all-clear designation. The district’s fiscal score was zero across all six financial measures;

— Established regular education non-resident tuition rates for the 2022-23 school year of $11,253 for kindergarten through sixth grade and of $13,934 for seventh through 12th grade;

— Approved a scholarship award in memory of the late Barbara Jo Westcott, whom Van Alstynbe described as a “long-time, much-loved fifth-grade teacher.” The scholarship will be given to a graduating senior who intends to pursue a career in elementary education;

— Approved two new clubs: Connect 4 Cancer at the high school, which is “to spread awareness about different types of cancer while helping contribute to find the cure,” and Cinema Club, “to make mini movies” at the middle school; and

— Heard from board member Rebecca Butterfield, a pediatrician, about increased vaping throughout the region. She suggested parents talk to their children about peer pressure.

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Rachel Anderson said vaping was addressed in the one semester of the health curriculum, and that students caught vaping are required to watch a presentation about it.

Gonzalez-Parker said there was a misconception that vaping is benign, and board member Katie DiPierro suggested a preventative, rather than a response, strategy.

“We could look at some ways to get the message out,” said Wiles, suggesting ads on the school newscasts.

Laster recommended using a package from BOCES to be sent to students and parents. “I need parents’ help,” he said.