Valley Central seat to remain vacant

By Ted Remsnyder
Posted 2/20/19

The Valley Central Board of Education will continue to be down to six members until the upcoming spring election, after the council decided during its Feb. 11 meeting not to fill the seat left vacant …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Valley Central seat to remain vacant

Posted

The Valley Central Board of Education will continue to be down to six members until the upcoming spring election, after the council decided during its Feb. 11 meeting not to fill the seat left vacant when former Trustee Joseph Byrne resigned last month. Now voters will get the chance to find his replacement, as the slot will be up for grabs in the May school board election.

Board Vice President Sarah Messing and Trustee Brad Conklin will also be up for re-election this spring, and the council will presumably be back to seven members if at least one other candidate emerges to compete for a spot on the board. With the tight time frame to fill Byrne’s vacancy, the group opted to stick with six members for the rest of the school year.

“You’d have to post the job, advertise it and then interview people, and I guess they didn’t feel there’s enough time in between now and May,” Valley Central Superintendent John Xanthis explained. “By the time that all happened, the election would be upon us. So they decided to keep it vacant until the election.”

After the board’s Jan. 22 meeting ended with Trustee Sheila Schwartz accusing Board President Melvin Wesenberg of verbally abusing her, an investigation was launched by the district into the incident. No lingering signs of hostility were present during last Monday’s meeting, as the board went about its business as usual, with no mention of the incident.

“It’s under investigation,” Xanthis said. “I said to the board tonight that after a meeting filled with a lot of tension, even during the meeting, tonight was a much better night for the district. They showed themselves to be ready to put that stuff behind them and move on for the good of the district, but more so for the good of the kids.”

During last week’s meeting, a Town of Montgomery police officer was present in the room at the district’s request for the first time after the incident that took place after the previous meeting. “We thought it would be good public safety just to have somebody here at the board meeting,” the superintendent said. The district plans to continue to invite the department to send an officer to each meeting for the remainder of the school year. “I think it might not be a bad way to continue,” Xanthis said. “I didn’t have anybody question why that was the case tonight, and as long as it doesn’t hurt the manpower of the Montgomery police and they’re able to provide that, I’d say we probably should continue that, at least through June 30th and we seat a new board.”

Transportation issues
The transportation issues that district families have experienced since the East End Bus Lines company took over Valley Central’s bus contract last year continue to linger, as a group of local parents spoke to the board during last Monday’s meeting in hopes that the delays would finally be resolved.

Deborah O’Keefe, whose child is a first grader at Montgomery Elementary, noted that children have had to endure needlessly long bus rides. “My daughter’s bus route currently requires the students to be in transit for obscenely long amounts of time, averaging about 45 minutes each way,” she explained to the board. “On multiple occasions, students have been on the bus from anywhere to an hour to an hour and 15 minutes because substitute drivers were sent to the school half an hour after dismissal and were given incomplete routes that didn’t show students recently added and the longest distance stops.”

O’Keefe told the board that children have become psychically ill from enduring long bus rides. “Students have been on the bus so long they’ve been reduced to tears, urinated themselves and gotten sick,” she said. O’Keefe also explained that her previous efforts to get answers about the problems resulted in no satisfaction. “Despite numerous attempts to resolve the issues with the bus company and the district, I’ve been informed that no changes are being made and the issues will remain as is,” she said. “Each time I’m given nothing more than a blanket apology and told that they’re isolated incidents and won’t happen again. The bus company puts blame on the district and instructs me to resolve it with them, and the district tells me to contact the bus company.”

Xanthis said the district is working with East End to resolve the bus delays. “Absolutely we want to address this and certainly some of those complaints are under review as we speak,” he noted. “Our new Superintendent for Business Carleen Millsaps, in the two months she’s been here, a lot of her time has been dedicated to trying to clean up some of the issues in transportation. She meets once a week with the owners of the company about the issues. So we’re trying our best to resolve these issues. I will say that since she’s (Millsaps) been here, even though we’re not anywhere close to where we want to be, but communication has improved. Customer service has to improve a lot more, but I think we’re going in the right direction.”

Public referendum
The board voted 6-0 during its session last week to hold a public hearing at its next meeting on Feb. 25 to potentially pass a resolution that would allow the CSArch architectural firm to begin conducting the groundwork for a potential public referendum project that would see the district renovate the High School-Middle School complex parking lot. The board is examining a proposal that would also include pool dehumidification at the joint school site, new lighting at the high school auditorium and a new bathroom/concession facility near the football field.

During last week’s session, CSArch gave the board a base estimate of $7,485,707 for the proposed project. Additional options for projects with price tags of $15 million, $20 million and $25 million were also discussed. For the potential $7.4 million project, taxes would increase $12.38 per $100,000 of assessed value for local homes if the taxpayers were to eventually approve the project if it goes up for a referendum vote.

At the board’s next meeting, they will consider passing a resolution for the intent to declare lead agency on the project, which would allow CSArch to get the ball rolling on the early steps of a project. The board has not yet approved a referendum with a specific price tag, and the administration is expected to bring a recommendation on the project size to the next session. “You’re not tied to that, what it gets us putting together is everything required to go through the SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) process,” Thomas Ritzenthaler of CSArch replied to a question from Conklin about the board being locked into a specific number for the project. The firm would complete the SEQR process while the board still has discretion on the scope of any proposed referendum.

Xanthis has urged the board to move forward with a potential project to renovate the high school parking lot before the New York State Department of Transportation begins its work on Route 17K to install traffic lights at the school complex.

“My hope would be that after the budget vote, if we have a positive budget vote, then we can say that everything’s been done and see what we want to bring to the public,” he said. “We have to ask what’s the dollar number they could support at this time? Then we hope we could bring something by the early part of July. I’m not sure we can get the vote by July, but the whole idea is to get the work started in the summer of 2020, but it’s going to be tight. If we push it back to the fall or next November, then we’d lose another year. That’s why I think it’s so critical to do, if nothing else, the minimum.”

The superintendent said the district would like to establish indoor bathrooms by the field, replacing the portable toilets that are currently used. “We really need to have restroom facilities out there,” Xanthis said. “It would also be nice to have a concession stand where we have running water and some of the things where it would be easier for people to do fundraising, because that’s really what the key is.”