Emilia Teasdale is reporting for The Columbia Paper the Ichabod Crane Board of Education was briefed March 3, on the progress of the district's $27-million capital improvement project. The major part of the plan includes work on the district’s three school buildings and is slated to start this summer. A team from Con Edison presented the plan to install solar panels behind the primary school in what is now a wooded area. The energy generated by the panels will feed the energy grid and result in a credit to the school district and offset about $1 million of the total construction costs. Design plans for the panels will go to the state Education Department for approval. The Con Ed team said they will have the designs submitted by August and will likely receive approval by December. The panels will be installed in 2021. School Board President Matthew Nelson said the solar installation is a new part of the plan and that more information will be available online. In other news, the board is still awaiting approval from SED for the general design plan. Representatives from CSArch, the project architects, and Turner Construction, the project management company, said construction bids should be going out in the spring and contracts awarded in May. Turner representative Larry Tune said that the project is projected to come in $500,000 under budget. District voters approved spending $27 million on the upgrades in December 2018. Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.