Vol. 36, No. 36 3 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
20-year
retrospective VC wins
opener
Page 12 Page 40
3
ONE DOLLAR
w w w .W a l l k i l l V a l l e y T i m e s . n e t
School’s open
VC anticipates a smooth start for the new school year
Beautiful
bovines
Vision of Wallkill launches Art
Along the Sidewalk project
By LAURA FITZGERALD
[email protected]
to pull buses and bus drivers to drive
sports routes and the students got home
later. Parents were frustrated, and we
heard from our administrators that this
is not the way to do it.”
East End Bus Lines owner John
Mensch was in attendance at the Valley
Central Board of Education meeting on
Aug. 27, and informed the board that
his company is prepared for the start of
school on Sept. 5. “We plan on having a
good opening,” Mensch told the board,
adding that a new dispatcher has been
hired by the firm. Mensch also promised A photo-bombing cow peeked his
head in front of a beautiful view of the
Shawangunk Mountain Ridge. Another
floated
in
space.
Two
cows in canoes
paddled on a
river.
Painted on
18-by-24-inch
plastic yard
signs, these
colorful pieces
of art dotted
the hamlet for Vision of Wallkill’s (VOW)
Art Along the Sidewalk project.
VOW, a community revitalization
group, launched the project last weekend,
a community art display that deposited
painted portraits around the hamlet.
“The purpose of the project is to bring
some color to the hamlet and hopefully
enough interest in the art that people stop,
look at them, and look at our businesses,”
project coordinator Julie Craner said.
The signs were created by 15 local
artists ranging in age from six years
old to senior citizens. Craner said she
found artists to volunteer through word
of mouth, her involvement in VOW and
through the art show at Weekend of
Continued on page 4 Continued on page 28
East End Bus Line officials are confident that all of the kinks that plagued the start of the 2017-18 school year have been worked out.
By TED REMSNYDER
With the new school year starting
this week for Valley Central, the district
is hopeful that the transportation
problems that plagued the district at the
start of the 2017-2018 school year will
not be repeated this month. After Valley
Central and the Wallkill Central School
District came to a joint bus agreement
last year with East End Bus Lines after
spending decades with the First Student
bus company, East End’s introduction to
Valley Central was rocky, with weeks of
tardy buses arriving at district schools
and students’ home.
By the conclusion of the school
year, the issues had mostly been settled,
and the district is expecting the bus
company to provide consistent service
in the second year of its contract. “The
problems we had at the beginning of the
year were abnormal,” Valley Central
Superintendent John Xanthis said.
“Then we switched the bell times, the
buses, the postcards that went out were
not accurate. That was all self-inflicted.
By the end of the year, things had
certainly settled down. What continues
to be a problem, and it’s not just Valley
Central, is that there’s not enough bus
drivers. So there were days that we had
SERVING CRAWFORD, GARDINER, MAYBROOK, MONTGOMERY, PINE BUSH, SHAWANGUNK, WALDEN AND WALLKILL