"It's been a really great year for us."

Sue Filburn, Malta Sunrise Rotary President Arlene Schmidt, and Stuart Williams at yesterday's meeting.

Our Rotary Facebook editor Barbara Conner is a former teacher and school board member (not in the Ballston Spa district), so she gets to describe yesterday's meeting (the quote in the headline is from Sue Filburn):

Thank-you to our guest speakers today, Sue Filburn, VP of the Ballston Spa Central School District's Board of Education, and Stuart Williams, Coordinator of Community Relations for the Ballston Spa district. Sue gave us the highlights of a number of changes and achievements for the district, as well as an overview of the proposed budget. Among these are the reinstatement of a full time orchestra teacher and a full time computer technology teacher. Ballston Spa offers a wide range of opportunities to students, from classes in the building trades to Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, programs and extra-curricular opportunities in the arts, and district-wide athletic programs.
The school district budget vote and school board elections will take place on May 16th this year. Polls will be open from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm. In addition to the budget and BOE candidates, there will be three propositions on the ballot.

A Meet the Candidates Night will be held in the high school library on May 1 at 6:30 pm. There will also be several opportunities to learn more about the proposed budget. In Malta, the budget presentation will be on May 10 at 6:30 in the Malta Community Center, but district residents may attend any of the six meetings scheduled around the local towns.
Need more information? Check out the Ballston Spa district's website www.bscsd.org or call the Business Office at 884-7195 ext. 1320.

In other news, tomorrow, Saturday, will be busy for us. A cleanup crew will meet at Forest Cleaners at 8 a.m. to do trash pickup on Dunning Street and then Malta Avenue Extension. Also tentatively scheduled that morning is installation of two benches near the gazebo at Routes 67 and 9 in downtown Malta, which Al Schmidt is coordinating. (And thanks to Paul Sausville, Mike Williams and Miles Cornthwaite for working Wednesday on the bench project, which is funded by a grant from the Town of Malta/GlobalFoundries Foundation.)

Trash Time

We'll be doing our regular cleanup on Dunning Street this Saturday morning, April 29. Meet at Forest Cleaners at 8 a.m. sharp; bring bags and gloves. 

Doing What You Love

Brad Gardner, head golf professional at The Edison Club in Rexford, was our speaker Thursday. Brad, 28, is a graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University, where he was a business major with a concentration in golf management. As a sideline, he plays guitar and banjo for the Big Sky Country band.

"It's like anything else," he said of his day job. "It's not so much work if you enjoy what you do."

Giving It Away

At our business meeting yesterday, following up on last month's, we agreed to donate $1,000 of Malta Sunrise Rotary Club funds to the clean water projects in Haiti and Honduras sponsored by the Glens Falls Rotary Club and Pure Water for the World. (Ian Williams of the Glens Falls club spoke to us about the program at our Jan. 26 meeting.)
Closer to home, we also voted to expand our scholarship program to award $100 book awards to runners-up -- a sign of the strength of this year's crop of applicants for our $1,000 scholarship award.