File under bee. We had a cousin who died in charming Niskayuna, New York. Due to the current…read moreAdministration's total screw up of the airlines industry, we took Amtrak with its 10% Military / Veterans Discount, with a bus transfer from the Schenectady, NY train station, to and from for the funeral. While there, we visited the very high-quality ranked Niskayuna High School. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. -- Dr. Seuss Did you know that Niskayuna High School Library has honey bees that have made it their home since 2016? I didn't until my recent visit. This review focuses on my discovery of and visit to the Niskayuna High School Library Honey Bee Interpretive Center. Science teacher Paul Scott's first task was to get approval to bring a beehive into the school. "Make sure you start with the people who are most likely to be affected by it," advises Scott, who first consulted the school nurse about allergy concerns and the grounds crew before obtaining permission from the principal. Thousands of honeybees busy themselves inside the school's observation hive, built and installed by Scott and another teacher in 2016. People who don't want to interact with the bees aren't forced to as the location of the hive was no afterthought: The media center, with its large windows overlooking an enclosed courtyard, is a prime and safe location for students to watch bees exit and enter the hive through the pipe that connects the hive to the outdoors. And it's a hub of activity at the school. You might think, what do bees eat there? Don't worry, bees can fly up to 5 miles from their hive to collect food, but there are plenty of trees and other plants blooming throughout the city. Each beehive could have up to 60 thousand bees, and while many are out foraging for food, about 2/3 of the colony stays home to clean, care for the young, make honey, guard the hive, and take care of the queen bee. Donna McAndrews, the school's library media specialist, developed a "bee corner" around the hive, displaying books and informational posters related to bees. What happens when a bee moves to a new hive? They have a house-swarming party! That was proudly told to me by one of the students there. The library staff is friendly, professional, helpful, smart, family-friendly, and disabled-friendly. "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." -Dr. Carl Sagan, Cosmos "I'm tired of that stupid phrase, "the birds and the bees" which is supposed to represent "the facts of life" or the beginnings of the sex instruction of the young. Why for heaven's sake, has anyone ever tried to explain sex by talking about the birds and the bees? What have the birds and the bees to do with it? IT'S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. Will you get that through your head? IT'S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. The bee travels to one flower and picks up pollen from the stamens. The pollen contains the male sex cells of the plant. The bee then travels to another flower (of the same species) and the pollen brushes off onto the pistil, which contains the female sex cells of the plant. ... Now in the human being ... we don't rely on bees to do it for us." -- Dr. Isaac Asimov, US Army Veteran, scientist and Grand Master science fiction author P.S. Don't message me because in spite of my several complaints to yelp, for years now I am unable to open up any messages in yelp to me :-(

It's that time of year... concerts!…read more All my kids went to Niskayuna Schools and now my grandkids are going here. Located in a small town/suburb of Schenectady New York and is ranked very high in the state. Go Niskayuna Warriors!

Superb school. Every day I drop my son off here, I thank…read moreGod for having been given such a blessing.

Very disappointing experience. Wish we had never gone to the school. My son was treated poorly by…read morestaff and administration. Staff was allowed to bully my child and nothing was done about it. They did everything they could to make him feel unwanted and worthless. Talking to administration about our concerns regarding the teachers there was a waste of time and effort. The only thing that gives me peace is the fact that I know God is in control of everything. He will fight for those who are not able to fight for themselves. We are at a new school and much happier. We transferred out in the middle of the year because my son's was unbearable. Hard to believe this is a Catholic school. I blame on the administrator for allowing his staff to behave the way they did with my child. He did absolutely nothing. He would not even make a teacher apologize when she yelled my son's personal business in a hallway in the presence of several students. I pray every night that this school will be exposed for its poor treatment of minorities. May God have mercy on all those involved.

The building is secure and you need to get permission to enter the building. I have been her in the…read morepast a few times, with the first time being to inquire about taxes and the next time to enroll my son to school. This time I Nneeded to get some books for my son who talkes virtual classes and this is where I was asked to go to. The lady at front desk was friendly.

the school lunch tastes like a$$, my teacher always takes her shoes off and makes the class smell…read morelike feet, but good thing i stole her shoes and im selling them on ebay. (unfortunatly they were the backup pair) and did i mention i cant even describe what the food they serve us is? it looks like pig slop. we have fire drills so much that kids dont take it seriously might not survive an actual emergency. this school sucks.

Each of my teenage daughters did behind-the-wheel lessons with Steve. The girls have different…read morepersonalities and approached learning to drive with completely different attitudes, and Steve's lessons adjusted to what they needed perfectly. The confident, casual daughter memorized a bunch of Steve's sayings and they arrived back like a couple of buddies and proceeded to perform them for us parents like a jokey catechism. For the super-nervous daughter, he instructed her to pull over as she was fighting tears and explained to me afterwards, "When they're fighting tears they're too distracted to drive safely and learn, so it's better just to pull over, cry for a couple of minutes, and move on." Both girls passed their behind-the-wheel test on the first try.

this is the best driving school I ever come across my teacher nick G is amazing how he put out his…read morewords to me when teaching I fully recommend easy driving this is a great driving school in schenectady county up state NY I pasted my road test with getting 6 lessons on the road .I'm just very satisfied with this company thank to easy method driving school and it's team.

Mr Keyshore is very helpful and professional, he assess your skills and makes sure you correct any…read moreissues you have until it is perfect. He works on your schedule and is flexible and reliable. thanks to him , I passed the test and have improved in all my driving skills especially parallel driving

Was not very impressed with this business. My son took driving lessons here and the gentleman that…read morewas said to have owned the company was the one who gave him driving lessons. The only problem was that he never actually ever let him take the wheel by himself and drive the car. He does charge $50 a lesson which is a good price but he needs to allow people to actually learn how to drive and actually feel with the vehicle feels like or else they're never going to understand how to drive a vehicle. My son spent $300 and really didn't know much more than when he started which to me was concerning. but what was more concerning to me was when my son was coming to me telling me that he would have to stop during the middle of his our session I'm driving so that the instructor or the owner of the company could go drop paperwork off at his place of business I believe it was. Does seem to be a reoccurring thing happening more often while he was driving on his lesson. Now if you take 5 minutes to go run something into an office and come back out to a vehicle and you do that 12 times that's an hour that you paid for and you didn't drive. That to me is being dishonest needless to say my son is no longer with this company but I felt that I needed to write this because I feel that he should learn from his mistakes and do things differently from the way he has been doing it. if he chooses not to then his customers need to know that that's the way he's doing things and they need to decide whether they want to give him their money or not. That's just my concern from a concerned father.