SARATOGA SPRINGS— More than a dozen parents spoke at a recent Saratoga Springs School District Board of Education meeting in opposition to proposed changes to the district’s busing schedules.

The changes, which received significant pushback from board members at last month’s meeting, would, among other things, switch the high school’s start time to 7:30 a.m. and push back four elementary schools’ start times to 9:50 a.m. 

The new start times would be the result of transitioning the district from a two-tiered busing system to a three-tiered one. Doing so, suggested the results of a six-month study commissioned by the district, would help ease problems caused by the ongoing bus driver shortage.

Parents at the January 9 board meeting cited lack of available childcare, work schedules, earlier start times for teenagers, and young children arriving home in the dark as reasons to oppose altering the district’s schedules.

“It boggles my mind that this is our only best solution,” said Ana Ventre, a Saratoga resident and middle school teacher at Broadalbin-Perth.

“Schools do not exist in isolation and neither does a single school problem,” said Erin Leary, president of the Lake Avenue Elementary PTA. “I know that everyone here and working at the district does know that, but [the proposed scheduling changes] certainly didn’t suggest that.”

Leah Grady, a Spanish teacher at Queensbury High School, said that teaching sleep-deprived teenagers at 7:30 a.m. is an “ugly” experience, with students behaving as if they are “one step up from zombies.” Pushing back high school start times, Grady said, could be “life changing” for tired adolescents.

Maddy Zanetti, the co-owner of Impressions of Saratoga and The Dark Horse Mercantile, said she would struggle to staff her businesses if employees who are parents needed to pick up their kids in the early afternoon or drop off their kids late in the morning.

When the scheduling changes were first proposed at a December 12 Education Board meeting, Saratoga Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Patton called them a “starting point” for conversations with the community. “This is one solution,” Patton said. “There may be other solutions out there that we haven’t even explored yet.” 

Patton again emphasized at the January 9 meeting that no schedule changes had been decided upon, nor would they happen any time soon (if indeed they happen at all).

The district has been contending with logistical challenges in its transportation department for several years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the district had 85 drivers. It now has 69 drivers who are tasked with covering 71 routes across 112 square miles. The district has been engaged in driver recruitment efforts, but “even with those efforts in place, driver shortages continue to be a problem,” Patton said last month.

Bus driver shortages have been occurring across the country, as well. Data from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that from September 2019 to September 2023, there was a 15.1% decrease in the total number of K-12 bus drivers nationwide.

The ongoing driver shortage in the Saratoga Springs School District has resulted in several bus route cancellations, including one instance in November when buses 461 and 466 were both canceled, along with all after school late buses.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — On Monday, Empire State University announced the launch of SUNY’s first Spanish-language online degree program, a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA). The university will welcome its first cohort of students into this program in Fall 2025.

Developed in partnership with SUNY, Empire State University’s Spanish BBA program will be taught fully online and entirely in Spanish, with wraparound student supports, such as financial aid, accessibility, and tutoring, offered by faculty and staff who are native or near-native Spanish speakers. The university has hired new faculty and staff to support this program.

The Spanish BBA, a 124-credit program, will mirror its English-language counterpart, covering a range of courses including marketing, financial accounting, management principles, and resource management. The program will also offer a selection of general education courses in Spanish, including courses in science, math, humanities, the arts, and history. The program has been reviewed and approved by SUNY and the New York State Education Department.

“As someone who moved to the United States in search of educational and economic opportunity, I take great pride in seeing Empire State University embrace diversity by launching our first degree program fully offered in Spanish,” said Provost Rai Kathuria in a news release. “As New York’s only public online university, we are uniquely positioned to serve Spanish-speaking students regardless of where they live.”

For more information on the program, visit www.sunyempire.edu/president/spanish-bba/.

BALLSTON SPA — The Ballston Spa Central School District will begin enrolling students for its Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) Program for the 2025-2026 school year next month.

The online registration form will be available on the district’s UPK web page beginning at 8 a.m. on February 10. The application deadline is March 28. Children who reside within the school district and are four years of age on or before December 1, 2025 are eligible.

In the event that there are more applicants than available spaces, all complete applications will be included in a random lottery that will be conducted at the close of the enrollment period. Those not selected in the lottery will be placed on a waiting list. All families who submit a timely application will be mailed acceptance/declination letters after the lottery. All complete applications received after the March 28 deadline will be placed on a waiting list in the order in which they are received. 

For additional information, visit the district’s Universal Prekindergarten Program web page at www.bscsd.org/departments/curriculum-instruction/2025-2026-universal-pre-kindergarten-program.

BALLSTON SPA — Ballston Spa High School’s “silent and away” cell phone policy appears to be working, according to a presentation delivered by Principal Matthew Robinson at a December 18 Board of Education meeting.

Last year, the school implemented the new policy that requires phones to be silent and not visible in classrooms. Each classroom has a phone holder that teachers can either use or not use as they see fit. If a student is caught using a phone during class time, they are sent to the office and their phone is confiscated for the rest of the day.

Robinson said that, thus far, students have been “pretty compliant” with the rules. Freshmen and sophomores have been especially compliant, he said, because they became used to the policy during middle school. High School teachers have also reported that they’ve seen less cell phone issues during instructional time. 

According to data presented by Robinson, from September through December this year, there were 84 total cell phone infractions. These infractions tended to happen during unstructured time such as lunch, when cyberbullying incidents can sometimes occur. 

Robinson said he doesn’t think that cell phones have introduced new problems with bullying, but rather made existing issues worse. “It’s rare now that we deal with a bullying situation and there’s never a cell phone involved,” he said.