FONDA- Fonda-Fultonville Central School District boosters need to raise funds to pay advisers' stipends so extracurricular clubs can have activities this coming school year.
The budget for the 2012-13 school year, which was approved by the public, does not include stipends for club advisers, who usually are teachers.
Without a club or class adviser, the students cannot access any of the money already gathered through fundraising.
For example, the senior class cannot use any of the money to pay for gowns for graduation or a senior banquet.
However, if money can be raised to pay for a club or class adviser, with the Board of Education's approval, the respective club will have access to their income.
During a discussion at the district Board of Education's meeting Monday, Interim Superindendent Patrick Michel said members of the teachers' union have a "first right of refusal" to prevent volunteers from absorbing their former roles as advisers.
Michel said he believed the union has shown an "unwillingness to let volunteers have rights to these positions."
Because the budget has been accepted, funds cannot be shifted to adviser positions. Any funds raised by students cannot be used to pay for stipends, Michel said. Donations to the adviser positions must come from adults.
"Budgets have consequences," Michel said. "And the people of this community voted yes to that budget. And in that, they supported the lack of extracurricular activities. If people can't pull the funding together to do this, it's not going to happen."
From statements made by the school board, several members did not know this problem would arise.
High school Principal David Halloran expressed his disbelief that teachers "wouldn't want to have these programs available to the students."
"I'm a taxpayer here, and I think we were all under the impression that even though those stipends were gone from the budget, we were going to be able to volunteer and still do this just for the kids and to continue what they worked three or four years for," Robin Rose, the former Class of 2013 adviser, said.
Pat Mancini, a physical education teacher, was displeased with what the board had to say.
"I don't want to be bashed in public anymore," Mancini said. "We're going to be the bad guy again, when we've given a lot. How much more do you want from us?"
Mancini declined to answer any questions after the meeting.
Board President Linda Wszolek and board member Kelley O'Kosky both said they wanted to stress they were not bashing the teachers. They both said they wanted to find a way to deal with this, despite being in a difficult financial situation.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Republicans heading to their party convention are eager to hear an earful about the shortcomings of President Barack Obama's record, the woeful U.S. economy and the competing visions of the two presidential candidates. What they aren't looking for is any mention of compromise, which most Americans say is necessary to get the nation back on track.
The Republicans want a party like in 1980, when the GOP ousted a Democratic president after one term.
Delegates from around the country have big dreams for the Aug. 27-30 gathering in Tampa, Fla., where Mitt Romney will accept the party's nomination and Republicans will kick off their final push to defeat Obama. They sketched out a sharp message they want to hear from speaker after speaker - onetime White House hopefuls, GOP governors, congressional leaders and the party's top recruits angling to win a job in Washington.
Conventions are four-day slugfests directed at the opposing party and its candidate. The rhetoric is brutal, vitriolic and far from conciliatory. Some lines are memorable.
"Poor George, he can't help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth," quipped Texas state treasurer Ann Richards to laughs and applause at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in 1988. Her target was the well-heeled GOP nominee, Vice President George H.W. Bush.
Twenty years later, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn., and compared her mayoral experience in Wasilla, Alaska, to that of nominee Obama.
"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," she said.
The crowd roared.
Ed Cox, the chairman of the Republican Party in New York, wants speakers at the convention to echo the message that Romney delivered after he won the Wisconsin primary in April. Romney cast the election as a choice between what he called Obama's "government-centered society" and the "opportunity society" the former businessman said he would pursue as president.
"This is the crux of our message, that we are for an opportunity society of free people and free enterprise," Cox said in an interview with The Associated Press. "America has always been about people having dreams, going out and working to make them. To do that they don't want the heavy hand of government on top of them, whether it's in taxes or regulations."
The Obama administration in its first year "ignored what they were elected to do, which was to pay attention to jobs and the economy," said Cox, who has seen his share of conventions as the son-in-law of President Richard M. Nixon.
Jim McErlane, a lawyer from Chester County, Pa., said convention speakers should keep it simple.
"The economy, the economy, the economy," he said in an interview. "Jobs, jobs, jobs."
Shawn Steel, a lawyer from Palos Verdes, Calif., wants the convention to remind Americans of 1980, when Ronald Reagan accepted the nomination in Detroit and then scored a landslide victory that knocked out President Jimmy Carter and helped Republicans seize control of the Senate.