Getting Organized For The New Year
by Alex Brooks
The Hoosick Falls School Board held its organizational meeting on Tuesday evening July 7. Rachel Boisvert was re-elected as President of the Board and Joe Patire was re-elected as Vice-President, both by unanimous vote. This was the first in-person meeting of the Board since the pandemic started.
The Board named KeyBank the official bank depository, Twin Rivers Medical its medical provider, William Ryan of Tabner, Ryan & Keniry LLP as the District’s legal counsel, and The Eastwick Press and The Eagle Newspaper as the School’s official newspapers. It named Pam Cottrell the District Clerk and the Chief Election Inspector for the District from July 1 until the end of the year, when she will be retiring.
Joe Patire thanked Patrick Dailey and his team for organizing the revised graduation under difficult circumstances. Jackie Houghton said she received quite a few nice comments from parents about their student’s graduation experience. Pat Dailey said many of the students told him it felt more personal than other graduations seemed to them. Rachel Boisvert said the parade was a nice touch. Dailey said the administration is thinking about what parts of this year’s graduation they might want to incorporate in the graduation ceremony next year when they hope to get back to a “normal” graduation.
Dailey said a graduation video is in the works and should be ready for release soon.
Fall Plans Up In The Air
School Superintendent Patrick Dailey said the first day of school for students will be September 8, but beyond that plans for the fall are still in chaos. The State has suggested that a maximum of 10 students per room would be best for in-person classes held this fall. But in the Hoosick Falls Elementary school, the average class size is 18 students, and in the High School the average class size is 22 students. So to meet the state guidelines the District would have to cut class sizes in half. On the face of it, that would suggest that the District would need twice as many rooms and twice as many teachers, or else the classes would have to meet half as many times as usual. How the District will solve such conundrums in a time of falling revenues is nowhere near worked out. Dailey said he is supposed to submit a re-opening plan in a week or so, but he doesn’t see how he can get to a detailed practical plan by then. He said perhaps with more state guidance and a little more time to formulate plans, the District will be able to envision a workable re-opening plan for the fall. He said the District is looking into providing HEPA filters for its Univentilators which handle air in the classrooms, but he doesn’t yet have any figures on how much this would cost or how it could be fit into the budget, especially if the threat of a further 20% state aid reduction remains on the table.
Dailey said the day of the meeting was day 2 of the summer school. He said there will be about 20 students involved in the summer school, and they are all wearing face shields rather than masks. At this meeting the Board approved summer hours for all of the staff involved in the summer school, including teachers, staff, administration, guidance counselors, lunch staff, and bus drivers.
Dailey also said ceremonies to honor the late Ron Jones are in the works. The first event will be a golf tournament to be held on July 17 at the Hoosick Falls Country Club, organized by coaches and administrators from HFCS, to honor Coach Jones and jump-start an award fund in his name.
Dailey said two memorial videos are being made. A 3 minute video by the Tamarac Boosters Club is nearly complete, sponsored by people who got to know Jones recently when they were setting up the joint Tamarac/Hoosick Falls football team with him, who were tremendously impressed with him through that experience. A longer video is being done by Rob Allen, who is interviewing people in the local community who knew Coach Jones.
Dailey said the old boilers were fully disconnected on the day of this meeting, and a crane will be coming in the next week or two to remove them and put the new boilers in place.
Plans For Phase 2 of Capital Project Nearly Finished
School Business Administrator Emily Sanders said she had not much to report. The State has not come out with anything yet about further budget cuts that they have warned about. Sanders said the plans for Phase Two of the Capital Project are nearly complete, and she expects they will be submitted to NYSED next week for approval. She expects NYSED’s review of the plans to be complete by September, and at that point the architects can be working on bidding documents. The project will probably be put out for bids in November.
The Board accepted a letter of resignation for retirement purposes from School Bus Attendant Diane Hunter, and a letter of resignation from Teacher Aide Alyssa Schneider. The Board appointed Tiffany McMahon as a Secretary, to replace Cathy Conway.
Upcoming Meetings
The HFCS Board of Education will hold its regular July meeting on Thursday July 30 at 6:30 pm and its regular August meeting on Thursday August 20 at 6:30 pm, and a worksession on Monday August 31 at 6:30 pm. The Board normally honors retiring teachers and teachers who have just been granted tenure in the same meeting, but this year in order to avoid having too many people in the room at the same time, they will do the two separately. Ceremonies for teachers newly grated tenure will be held at the August 20 meeting, and ceremonies for retiring teachers will be held at the August 31 work session.