by Alex Brooks
The Hoosick Falls School Board hired Nicole Mahoney as Assistant High School Principal for the upcoming school year at its meeting on June 20. High School Principal Pat Dailey said the search committee was unanimous in choosing her over the other candidates. He said he feels her skills are complementary to those of new High School Principal Michael Hall, and he looks forward with confidence to seeing the new High School leadership team in action. It is a four-year appointment at a starting salary of $75,000. She replaces Stacy Vadney, who took a job at Shenendehowa for the upcoming school year.
PTA Report
PTA President Susan Senecal gave a short presentation to the Board about PTA activities this year. She said they gave about $20,000 to the school over the course of the year. PTA donations pay for most of the field trips in the elementary and middle schools, and many other things besides. Senegal talked about some of the special events the PTA puts on, including Movie Nights, the Fall Festival, the Book Fairs, and the Color Run.
She said they held 7th and 8th grade dances this year, but they were not well attended, so they will discontinue those next year. The dances for fourth, fifth and sixth grades were well attended and successful, and they will continue.
Comptroller
School Business Administrator Emily Sanders said “today was the last day” that auditors from the State Comptroller’s office were at the school doing an exhaustive examination of all of the District’s financial transactions going back a number of years. The auditors have been working at HFCS since the beginning of February, and Sanders said “They looked at everything,” going back as far as 1999.
It will probably be 2 to 3 months before the auditors produce a draft stating their findings. Sanders said the only problem they have mentioned to her is that the District has too much money in reserve funds, but that is a problem which will solve itself as soon as the capital project gets underway.
Capital Project
Sanders said planning for the Capital Project is well underway. They recently had a meeting with the architects to choose a boiler. Presentations were given on four different boilers, and the committee unanimously chose one. The plan is to put in the new boiler and do some associated asbestos abatement in the summer of 2020, and do the rest of the work over the next two summers, so that the work would be mostly completed by the fall of 2022.
The architects are fast-tracking the boiler replacement project so that the District only has to make it through one more heating season with the existing aging boilers. They hope to get detailed plans for that project submitted to NYSED for approval shortly, so that the project can be out to bid in November or December, and the work can be scheduled for next summer.
Sanders also noted that the architects told her that bids have been coming in high on almost everything recently, and that may be a problem down the road when the bids start coming in, if the current trend continues.
Sanders also said a fundraising committee has started meeting, with the aim of coordinating all of the many fundraising activities going on at the school. This will involve scheduling issues, so they don’t happen all at the same time, as well as assessment of the effectiveness of each of the fundraising activities. Some are extremely successful, and some are flops. The magazine subscription fundraiser, for instance, used to be very successful, but lately it is a flop. Pat Dailey said that in general, the most successful fundraisers are the newer ideas, so some creative thinking may be needed to replace some of the older fundraising ideas with newer ones.
Board Action
• The Board abolished two nursing positions, one at Saint Mary’s Adademy because it is closing, and one LPN at the Central School. Business administrator Emily Sanders explained that since the central nursing station was established that handles both the Elementary and the High School, this position has become unnecessary.
• The Board approved renewal of the agreement to rent soccer fields for another year from the Hoosick Falls Soccer Club, for $7,800 per year, the same price as last year.
The Board scheduled a 24 hour overnight Board Retreat for July 26 and 27. The agenda includes such things as Board goals for the year, Superintendent goals for the year, discussion of communications strategy, District financial status, and other big-picture issues.
• The Board scheduled its Organizational Meeting for the upcoming year for July 9 at 6 pm in the Auditorium, and it scheduled a public hearing on revisions to the Code of Conduct manual for Wednesday, July 17 at 6 pm.