On Board Online • May 27, 2013

Budget votes

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer

Raising property taxes beyond the state-imposed cap was a much tougher sell for school budget voters this year.

Of 28 districts that sought to exceed the cap, only a quarter won the needed 60 percent supermajority approval. Last year, 48 districts sought voter permission to exceed their caps, and 60 percent received approval in May voting. Cornwall was only two votes shy of success, and other close losses in override votes were Elmira Heights, General Brown, Newcomb and South Seneca.

Newcomb was shy just 16 votes of the supermajority and one of 14 districts whose budgets would have passed had they needed only a simple majority. “It is frustrating when you’ve got a majority but not this number that New York State created of a supermajority,” Newcomb Superintendent Clark “Skip” Hults told On Board. “It’s an arbitrary percentage. But our job is to go back and find a number the community will support.”

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education commission launched its next phase of work last week with an Albany symposium that focused on consolidation and other forms of public education restructuring Richard Parsons, who chairs the New NY Education Reform Commission, said the focus on the structure of educational systems would kick off a new start for the group after several of its recommendations from last year – including grants for expanded pre-kindergarten and community-school grants and a new master-teacher program – were adopted by the governor.

“Now, in the second phase, the heavy lifting begins,” Parson told those gathered at the State Museum.

Parsons said the time is right for a methodical study of the state’s public education delivery system and judgments on whether the structure remains effective, relevant, cost efficient and sufficient for encouraging engagement by students and their parents.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Timothy G. Kremer
NYSSBA Executive Director

Each year as voters elect a new crop of school board members and others get re-elected to a new term, I am reminded of just how tough your job is. Oftentimes, the breadth and complexity of issues you face is overwhelming. Teacher evaluations and the tax cap immediately come to mind. Sometimes, deliberations can get ugly (budget cuts, school closures, standardized testing). There are few “perks” in the traditional sense, other than the lasting satisfaction of serving your community. 

This year, close to 1,600 school board seats will be filled in New York State. During my 15 years at NYSSBA, I’ve spoken to thousands of school board members. Whenever I ask, “Why do you do it?” I hear, almost without exception, that their greatest satisfaction involves doing their best to improve public education and their communities. I always hear a tremendous sense of stewardship and selflessness. School board members don’t serve for their own personal gain or interests; they serve because they have a compelling desire to contribute to something larger than themselves. They are deeply committed to their communities. They have their eye on the future and want to help all children succeed.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief

Robert Schneider, NYSSBA’s director of finance, has completed a 96-hour course and passed an exam to become licensed in New York as a property and casualty insurance broker. He pursued the licensure because NYSSBA is now offering workers’ compensation insurance programs to members through a partner organization, PERMA.

“In order for NYSSBA to properly offer endorsed insurance programs to its members, at least one staff member needs to be licensed as a property and casualty insurance broker,” said Deputy Executive Director Rita Lashway. “We are extremely proud of Bob’s accomplishment, which enables us to provide an important set of services to our members.”

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Peter Mannella

The Ohio kidnapping case has raised questions about criminal background checks for school bus drivers. Alleged kidnapper Ariel Castro drove a school bus for more than a decade, during which he was accused of domestic violence. According to news reports, a criminal charge against him in 2009 was not required to be reported under the system that Ohio used at the time but has since been updated.

Are school bus drivers in New York State subject to rigorous background checks? Yes! We New Yorkers can take pride in having a system that gives school officials current and timely information about all of our school bus drivers.

Section 509-cc of the Vehicle and Traffic Law requires a fingerprint-based background check and continuous monitoring of the criminal records of school bus drivers. The list of crimes that can disqualify a school bus driver was updated in 2011 by adding some 30 crimes to the list and making certain crimes permanent disqualifiers (e.g., being a registered sex offender).

The process involves taking a set of fingerprints and submitting them electronically to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) and the FBI prior to their hiring as school bus drivers. The expense for the fingerprinting ($107 per driver screened) is often but not always borne by the employer. Once the fingerprints are taken and submitted to DCJS, the employer may hire the driver conditionally pending receipt of the fingerprint results. If the results indicate that the driver must be disqualified, the employer must take such action immediately and must also advise the individual of their right to an appeal.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer

New York’s first crew of master teachers will be named on Sept. 1, and they will need to hit the ground running as mentors for their colleagues, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher told Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his cabinet.

During a public cabinet meeting on May 20, Zimpher outlined a brisk schedule for rolling out the incentive program, which was recommended last year by Cuomo’s Education Reform Commission and backed with $11 million in this year’s state budget.

Online applications for prospective master teachers will be available on July 1 and will be due on Aug. 1. In-person interviews also will be required for those who ultimately are selected, according to a State University of New York web page about the program.

Initially, Zimpher said, those selected will be teachers of secondary-level math or science, and four colleges will serve as host institutions for four regions: SUNY New Paltz in the Mid-Hudson area; SUNY Plattsburgh in the North Country; SUNY Cortland in Central New York; and Buffalo State College in Western New York.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By William Miller
Area 5 Director

The challenges of public education often require new approaches to deliver needed servings despite tight resources. A good example is the Owen D. Young Central School District, which has a part-time superintendent.

James Picolla has been serving as the Owen D. Young superintendent since early November 2012 through an intermunicipal cooperative agreement with Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES, where he is human resources director. Picolla works part-time in each of the positions.

Such a setup is rare – if not unprecedented – but it’s working.

“This is the only one I know of,” Herkimer BOCES District Superintendent Mark Vivacqua said. “It’s certainly something for the smaller districts to look at, but it has to line up just right.”

Owen D. Young’s arrangement started to come together when the Board of Education to look into ways to become more fiscally efficient began a few years ago. Board members learned the district was required to have a full-time building principal but not a superintendent, board President Cathy Mayton-Collins said.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer

Poughkeepsie city school students are playing a role in welcoming and encouraging some of New York’s smallest visitors, baby eels.

About 75 students and 12 adult staff members are among hundreds of volunteers along the Hudson River who help environmental scientists monitor the spring migration of young eels from the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda and north of Puerto Rico, to New York State.

The citizen scientists are part of a statewide effort called the Hudson River Eel Project. Every day at 4 p.m., students and other district volunteers pull on waist-high fishing waders and shuffle into a Hudson tributary to look for the American eel (Anguilla rostrata), which has been in decline over much of its range. They check cone-shaped traps, called fyke nets, to see how many of the tiny, translucent fish have arrived in the last 24 hours.

They keep it up for about six weeks each spring. “We’re just trickling down to the end of eel season,” Environmental Science Teacher Mark Angevine told On Board  in mid-May.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Kimberly A. Fanniff
Senior Staff Attorney

Over a four-month period, John L. Weslowski sent as many as eight separate emails per day to Rockland County officials to request information under the state Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). In one email, Weslowski requested 18 months of records relating to use by 33 county officials and employees of any and all Internet service, telephone service, mobile service, Blackberry or other communication or search device, including browser time by user and category. Other requests asked for all records pertaining to each employee of the county after July 7, 1998 and all records regarding any litigation against the county.

A ruling by the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, Second Department, in Weslowski v. Vanderhoef, is one of several recent cases in which branches of the Appellate Division addressed how governmental entities should respond to extensive or unusual FOIL requests.

Rockland County responded by informing Weslowski that fulfilling his request would necessitate the production of tens of thousands of pages of documents and would create an enormous administrative burden that would interfere with day to day operations. While the county ultimately granted the requests, it conditioned disclosure upon pre-payment of certain estimated costs.

On Board Online • May 27, 2013

By Pilar Sokol
Deputy General Counsel

A state appellate court has remanded a case in which a teacher who was the subject of a disciplinary proceeding under section 3020-a of New York’s Education Law was excluded from the hearing while the complaining witness testified. A lower court had previously confirmed the hearing officer’s decision in favor of the school district.

The complaining witness in Stergiou v. NYC Dep’t of Education was a student who alleged the teacher hit him. The teacher argued her exclusion from the hearing while the student testified violated her constitutional right to confront the witnesses against her. In addition, it violated an absolute similar right afforded by Section 3020-a of the state’s Education Law.