Topics include Common Core, funding, capital projects, mumps and water quality.

The breaking of the ground represents a major milestone in the $52.9 million Capital Project

Last year, two single-stall faculty bathrooms in New Paltz High School were designated as gender-neutral facilities available to all. It was heralded as a progressive step toward addressing the needs of transgender students in particular, as they may not feel comfortable using the gendered multi-stall bathrooms. However, it’s become clear that not everyone in the school community agrees.

With work on the elementary and high school windows and insulation behind schedule, Alan Barone said he is particularly worried about maintaining the heat in the buildings in January and February and wondered why second shift work that had been agreed upon has not been introduced.

One board member said changing the focus of the holiday was important because “how America was discovered is our origin story. It introduces and codifies who is considered American and who is not. It is often a child’s first lesson about encounters between people of different races and cultures. We owe it to the children of this district to faithfully and bravely examine the version of history we’ve chosen to tell.”

The profiles Kate Fishman writes about New Paltz High School students are so well-written, the reader may not realize the writer is herself a student.