PINE BUSH – Superintendent Joan Carbone presented the Pine Bush School District board of education with a revised code of conduct, now running to 36 pages, alongside a two page student discipline chart laying out the penalties for various infractions, from "academic misconduct" through "explosives" and "fighting" to "harassment/discrimination/bullying/anti-Semitism" and on to "profanity," "use of nicotine/smokeless products," "theft," "vandalism" and "weapons" this past Tuesday.

Sanctions can vary from a zero grade for cheating to in-school and out-of-school suspensions for five days, to a hearing with the superintendent.

Carbone praised the effort put in by the 20-member code of conduct committee composed of teachers, principals, parent representatives, student representatives, a union representative and representatives from human resources and special education programs. She noted that the review was needed both to conform to state requirements and to catch up with changes in the world.

"We didn't have a definition of 'Gender'," Carbone said. "We need to be compliant with the new language. This is all a sign of the times we live in."

That meant additions and changes to take account of things like "sexting" and new styles of dress, the latter warranting what the superintendent said was "our lengthiest discussions... The only code we had was fifteen years old." That meant talk of shorts, hats, and hoodies with the end result being no hats in elementary or middle school, and no hoodies anywhere, because of their way of obstructing student identification.

And what about hats during the Pledge of Allegiance?

"Absolutely, hats off," said Carbone.

New technology and new drugs also had to be confronted. Bullying gained more of a cyber bullying aspect and new synthetic and prescription drugs were added to previous lists.

Much of the board's discussion of the new code centered on "unsafe driving/parking," with such offenses to be governed first by a warning and then the "loss of parking privileges." That led to a question about what "unsafe driving" now meant.

Carbone acknowledged that this was tricky area for definitions. Board member Gretchen Meier said that a definition was needed, "if we suspend a student for driving." Carbone explained that by taking away parking privileges the problem was solved, in a way, because the student could not bring their car to school any more. Except that they might come anyway, and not park there.

Carbone noted that issue and said that they may change the prescribed responses to unsafe driving and make an adjustment to the disciplinary chart before it is mailed home to parents.

In other business, PBSD operations and maintenance director Jim Licardi gave a budget presentation noting that his department has 57 employees and covers about 850,000 square feet of buildings along with many playing fields, two swimming pools, several gyms and auditoriums. He added that the cleaning staff are performing well above the industry standard, but also noted a shortage of staff, which forces some difficult adjustments such as custodial workers having to do facility maintenance tasks. He added that the addition of one groundskeeper for 2015-16 had been tasked with simply catching up on things that had been neglected for years.

The biggest area of discussion from Licardi's presentation came over his suggestion for raising some fees, particularly for the use of classrooms. Currently Pine Bush charges $1.50 an hour for a classroom. Licardi explained that the cost of this actually ran to $5.28 an hour. Board member Roseanne Sullivan said it was important to keep the distinction in mind between outside users who rented a classroom, a pool or some other facility and made a profit from it, and users such as Girl Scouts who were more a community service. Board president Lloyd Greer said he thought the district should not be subsidizing any users of the facilities. However, an audience member then spoke up for the Girl Scouts and other non-profit users, explaining that raising classroom costs to $5 an hour for a meeting would be too much. More discussion of this issue was promised.

Technology director John Hicks then presented his budget and issues, noting that the switch to Chromebooks had been a major success while adding that the total number of computers had begun to decline, from 2,800 to 2,755 this year not counting the 3,500 Chromebooks.

Hicks also reassured Donna Geidel, assistant superintendent for instruction, that the schools will be ready for on-line state testing which will begin next year. He went on to request a new budget line item for security equipment/maintenance, explaining that with the significant increase in security cameras and card access doors and with more purchases on the way, the technology budget was being strained to cope.

Greer agreed that a new budget item should be added.