Basketball Competition Will Resume
by Alex Brooks
Hoosick Falls Superintendent Patrick Dailey said league competition in both Boys and Girls basketball will resume on February 22, subject to a list of conditions. There will be no spectators (this was decided by the WASAREN league, not the local District). Masks will be worn by all players. All players must be tested twice a week for COVID. One positive case ends the season. Academic standards for sports participation remain in place.
Dailey said this has been a difficult issue. New York State unexpectedly opened up high-risk sports on January 22, and Rensselaer County quickly approved it after that. But Dailey said at that time local rates of disease were pretty high, and it seemed like a bad time to restart high-risk sports, which is why The Board made the decision that it did. He said there has been quite a bit of pushback from the local community, including from the students themselves. He said the students have held peaceful protests to make their voices heard. He commended the students for being respectful in the way that they expressed themselves. “I am proud of how the students handled themselves – they did it the right way.” Dailey showed a website put up by student Dylan Baker which collected 440 signatures for a petition urging the restart of competitive sports.
But Dailey said the positivity rate in the local community is down now (below 4%) and he felt that justified a re-assessment. “I’ve spent most of the last two days studying this,” and the result was the proposal outlined above. The Board approved it by a 6-1 vote, with John Helft voting against.
Dailey said the District will start its own testing program, and all of the testing of the players will be done at the school, probably on Mondays and Thursdays. He also said if there is a spike in COVID cases in the community the Board might need to reconsider.
Wrestling and Competitive Cheer are not included in this decision, and will remain intramural only. But Dailey said he did open up extracurricular clubs this week, many of which will resume after-school meetings.
First Draft of 2021-22 Budget
The first draft of the budget for next year was presented at the February meeting. It showed an overall increase in the budget of $416,579, about 1.8%. Salaries, which make up half the budget, are up 3.5%, and benefits, which make up almost a third of the budget, are up 2.4%. Contributions to NYS retirement systems, which make up 6% of the budget, are up 8.2%. On the bright side, there will be no increase in the cost of health insurance, which makes up 21% of the budget and has often in the past been a budget-buster.
The increase in the tax levy shown in this draft was 5.31%, but the intention of the Board is to cut this down as the budget process goes along. School Business Manager Emily Sanders said an increase in the tax levy of 1.45% is allowed this year under the tax cap (inflation over the past year was just 1.23%), and the Board hopes to get below that number by the time it passes a final budget.
The budget calls for the replacement of 3 buses, two 65 passenger buses and one 24 passenger wheelchair bus, at a cost of $312,000. This purchase will have no impact on taxpayers, as 90% of the cost is paid by State aid, and the remainder will be paid by an existing bus reserve.
Sanders expressed concern about how much of the budget is paid by Federal aid that may not be there next year or in succeeding years. State aid to the District this year is down by almost a million dollars, and that is made up by Federal pandemic aid of slightly over a million dollars. She said if the pandemic adjustment in State aid goes the same way the Gap Elimination Adjustment did ten years ago, “we will be losing many millions of dollars in State aid over the next few years.” She offered a chart which showed that from 2010 to 2015, a total of over 8 million dollars in aid to the Hoosick Falls District was lost to the Gap Elimination Adjustment. She said she hopes the current New York State fiscal crisis doesn’t result in a similar defunding of the school.
Capital Project Bids
Bids for construction work on Phase 2 of the Capital Project were received February 10. A lot of evaluation and analysis must be done to understand exactly where the District stands with these bids, so the Board was not ready to talk about them in detail. A Board workshop was scheduled for Tuesday February 23 at 6 pm to discuss the Capital Project. But John Helft said he is “ecstatic” about the bids, which are generally “in the ballpark” of expectations, and may even be low. Helft said he is very happy about getting the main part of this project finally underway later this spring.
The next regular meeting of the Board of Education will be March 18 at 6:30 pm.