At a glance
Board member Maureen Sheridan has resigned, and the board voted to accept it and open her seat to the community. Anyone interested has until Friday September 11 to send a letter, and the board expects to choose at its September 15 meeting. The district also learned it won its Smart Schools award, roughly $1.72 million for cameras, cabling, phones and access points, and a separate state cybersecurity grant worth $35,000 in multi-factor authentication tokens. Administrators presented the improvement plans required because the elementary and junior high schools are both state-identified as needing targeted support. And the July 29 storm got into the building: water reached central office, and an insurance claim is going in to replace the carpet with tile.
Maureen Sheridan Resigns; Seat Opens to the Community
The board accepted a resignation and set out how it will fill the seat, following the process it has used before.
Key points
- The board voted to accept the resignation of Maureen Sheridan, effective July 22, 2026.
- Rather than appoint directly, the board will ask residents interested in the seat to submit letters of interest, a precedent the president said the board has followed as far back as he can remember.
- The clerk and the communications team will put out the call. The board will use the same few prompts it used last time, so the letters carry comparable information and can be read side by side.
- Members debated the deadline. A September 30 date was floated and judged too long; asking for letters before the August 25 meeting was judged unfair to applicants. They settled on Friday, September 11, the Friday before the September 15 meeting.
- The board expects to discuss the letters, take nominations and ideally choose at that September 15 meeting, and said interested applicants should attend if they can.
Letters of interest go to the district by Friday, September 11. The board will use a short set of prompts, which the communications team is to publish with the call.
Smart Schools Award Comes Through
An administrator opened the meeting with news the district has been waiting on for a year and a half.
Key points
- The district has been notified it received its Smart Schools award. The money covers wireless access points, security cameras, a phone system, a PA system and cabling, which she described as much needed.
- The district applied for $1,719,000 against an allotment of $1,771,000. It deliberately did not apply for the whole allotment because the application went in a year and a half ago and staff expected labour and parts prices to rise.
- That leaves roughly $52,000 of allocation unspent. Accessing it needs an amendment to State Ed rather than a fresh application.
- Vendors have met with the district and are producing updated price quotes. If the quotes come in above the remaining $52,000, the team will decide where to cut. The next meeting with the vendors is August 20.
- Once the board and State Ed approve the amendment, the business office handles the reimbursement submissions. Work will be scheduled after school and in the evenings so instruction is not disrupted.
The application total was read aloud as $1,719,000 plus a few dollars and cents. The allotment was given as $1,771,000 and the remaining balance as $52,000.
A State Cybersecurity Grant, and 450 Tokens
A second grant, applied for last year, also came through.
Key points
- The grant came through the governor's office, from Homeland Security.
- It provides physical security tokens for multi-factor authentication, one for each staff member. The district is receiving 450 of them, described as worth $35,000.
- The district already runs cybersecurity training for staff through a programme called Cyber Nut, and will add a second, Cyber IQ, in the fall. Similar work is starting with students, focused on phishing and scams.
- Accepting the tokens required a signature, so the item was hand-carried onto the consent agenda that night and approved.
Two Schools Identified for Targeted Support
The superintendent set out why the board was being asked to approve two improvement plans, and what the state designation means.
Key points
- New York's accountability system has identified two Hudson schools over concerns about their data: the elementary school and the junior high. The designation is Targeted School in Need of Improvement, or TSI.
- That triggers two layers of plan. A district-wide comprehensive improvement plan was written in the spring, submitted to the state and approved. Each identified building then writes its own school comprehensive education plan.
- Both building plans were on the night's agenda for board approval.
- An administrator cautioned that the plans were written last year and are a snapshot in time. Some things in them no longer exist, and she gave a since-discontinued reading programme as an example. Principals will update the board through the year.
- The plans share a structure: a shared vision, key strategies for school-wide instruction, and resource allocation. The buildings chose to spend on planning and collaboration time with teachers and department heads, targeted professional development, and curriculum writing.
- A member asked whether combining the junior and senior high under one principal changes the picture. The answer was that it is too soon to say, because the plans were written when the two were separate buildings, and that things will likely change through the year.
Hilgendorff was hired in June partly on his record at Greenville, where he was credited with guiding that district out of the same TSI designation. This is the first board meeting at which those plans came to a vote under him.
The July 29 Storm Got Into Central Office
The superintendent's report described the same storm the city's DPW reported on, from inside the schools.
Key points
- The junior and senior high building flooded around its courtyards during the July 29 downpour. Most of the surrounding hallways are tile, so crews could soak and push the water out.
- Central office does not have tile around its courtyard. It has older carpeting, and a decent amount of water got in.
- The district is filing an insurance claim, most likely to remove that carpeting and replace it with tile.
- The facilities crew used snow plows to push water away from the front of the building and route it downhill toward the river, which the superintendent said prevented worse damage. He said the facilities director called him that morning saying he thought they needed to close, while it was only sprinkling at the superintendent's own house.
The city's Code and Infrastructure Committee heard about this storm the night before, where DPW reported it had scoured the brick and stone sewers badly enough to expect sinkholes.
Summer Work: Boilers, a Roof, a Greenhouse
Facilities and the superintendent's report between them covered what has been going on in the buildings while school is out.
Key points
- New boilers for the high school were delivered last week and are being installed. The boiler room was gutted a couple of weeks ago as part of the energy performance contract work.
- Lighting in the junior and senior high has been replaced with more efficient fixtures under the same contract.
- Roof removal at Montgomery C. Smith was set to start this week. The two modular buildings, one in the field and one by the Fireman's Home property, are due to be removed this month.
- The greenhouse agreements were on the night's agenda. The goal is delivery and installation by the end of October, which the superintendent noted follows years of conversation about it.
- At the elementary school, an old refrigerator area in the kitchen was repurposed into a new walk-in fridge and freezer.
- Summer deep cleans are under way. The Facilities Committee next meets August 24.
Code of Conduct, a Retreat at Olana, and a New Teacher
The rest of the meeting: committee reports, a welcome, and the board's own development work.
Key points
- The code of conduct work has continued through the summer. A polished, colour-coded version is in progress along with a simpler one-page version for students, both meant to be ready for the first day of school. The subcommittee meets August 17 to talk through implementation, and the full policy committee restarts in September.
- The board and the administrative team held a retreat on August 5 at Olana, which lent its community space. It was facilitated by Dr. Jen Beauchamp and built around a DISC workplace profile assessment, covering each participant's style, strengths, priorities and communication. Another retreat is set for August 26.
- The board welcomed Jules Picuri, a new chemistry teacher at Hudson High School. She studied chemistry and African studies at Hobart and William Smith, earned a master's in education at the University of Louisville while teaching chemistry in Kentucky, and has moved back to be nearer family.
- The finance committee has not met and is scheduling. The audit committee has not met, but the internal auditor's reports and the corrective action plans responding to them were on the consent agenda.
- Several board members are attending the state school boards convention in Buffalo.
- Nobody signed up for either public forum.
- A member asked when school supply lists would be available. Elementary and junior high lists are on the district website under each school; high school students are assumed to know what to bring.
YouTube had not produced captions for this meeting, because the district livestreams and the recording was still processing. This transcript was generated from the audio instead, then de-looped. It carries no speaker labels, so attributions here come from what people say about themselves and each other. The roll call in particular is hard to read: one name is unclear, and members were noted as away on vacation.
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