Safety Efforts Earn East Greenbush Central School District Safety Excellence Award East Greenbush Central School District is one of the 100 school districts and Board of Cooperative Educational Services in the state to receive the "2008 School Safety Excellence Award" from the Utica National Insurance Group. Utica National officials presented the award at its 28th annual school safety seminar, one of the seven held in New York State. Utica insures more than 300 school districts in upstate New York for property and liability insurance and is one of the leading companies in the field. East Greenbush Central School District received a certificate from the insurance company to commemorate the district's safety efforts. "Safety and health concerns are a priority in our school districts. Whether we are parents seeing our child off on the school bus, teachers charged with the responsibility of educating, or staff who maintain the facility, there is a common thread of attention to safety issues," program initiator and Eastern Regional Office Loss Control Manager James Kristoff said. "It is with great pleasure that we recognize those schools that not only take safety to heart, but go above and beyond to provide a safe, healthy, and focused culture for learning." Utica National's School Safety Excellence Award Program helps participating schools enhance overall safety through measurable assessment. The program evaluates schools with their own transportation on 17 categories, schools with contract transportation on 16 categories and Boces on 11 categories, from school playground safety to indoor air quality, with specific, quantifiable data-gathering surveys. "The payoff goes beyond recognition - if our program is followed properly, it should enable schools to pinpoint specific threats to safety," Mr. Kristoff said. The award program has three levels (titanium, platinum, and gold) in which schools can earn a meritorious distinction by meeting specific criteria. Three towns reassess property values The towns of East Greenbush, Sand Lake and Schodack are in the process of reassessing the value of all properties within their borders for the first time since the late 1970s. Officials from the three towns hired GAR Associates - a real estate consulting firm based in Amherst, N.Y. - to help conduct the parcel-by-parcel review of every property within the towns to determine each property's current market value, based on a number of criteria including, among others:
When the towns complete the reassessment process this year, virtually all properties will have new values. Thus, property owners may see a change in their taxes.
On or about March 3, property owners within the school district should have received by mail a preliminary assessment and estimated tax impact notice that reflects changes in how much their properties are assessed for, following recent town-wide reassessment in Schodack, East Greenbush and Sand Lake. Because it has been almost 30 years since the last time town-wide reassessments were conducted in these three towns, property values have changed considerably - and many property owners may not be familiar with the reassessment process. Keep in mind that towns are solely responsible for assessing property values, and that school districts play no role in the process. However, because we know our residents may have questions, we have prepared this fact sheet that we hope you will find useful.
For more information regarding reassessment information, please refer |
SCHOOLS |
| COLUMBIA H.S. |
| GOFF M.S. |
| BELL TOP E.S. |
| GENET E.S. |
| GREEN MEADOW E.S. |
| DP SUTHERLAND E.S. |
| RED MILL E.S. |