Across northern Schoharie County, mysterious BB-gun shooters are taking aim at cars and trucks, and no windshield is safe.

Despite the January arrest of four men in connection with the incidents, the BB shootings go on, the Times Journal reports:

State Police in Cobleskill and Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond reported that 10 car and truck windows have been shot out since February 1.

That brings the total to at least 22 shootings since State Police arrested four young men in connection with the shootings in mid-January.

The more recent shootings have been concentrated in the area where earlier ones took place: Along Route 20 and side roads off 20 in Sharon, Carlisle and Esperance.

Photo of barn, fence and field in Kiamesha Lake by Catskills Photography. Shared in the Watershed Post Flickr group.

The Obama administration announced three new initiatives to benefit the rural economy, including a $15 million "Rural Jobs Accelerator" competition to fund job-creating projects in rural regions.

The White House also announced a new effort to boost "biobased" manufacturing, under which the federal government would seek to buy products like soap, paint and detergent from manufacturers that make them from farm-based sources instead of petroleum products.

Another initiative seeks to train more rural workers in health information technology, through parternships with community colleges.

From a press release describing all three new initiatives:

The Onteora Board of Education is scheduled to vote on one of three possible reconfiguration plans for the district on February 28. Two of the proposed plans call for the closing of the Phoenicia Elementary School, either with clustering of the elementary grades at Bennett and Woodstock, or keeping Bennett and Woodstock as K-6 schools. Under the third plan, dubbed the "bookends" plan, all three schools would remain open, and elementary grades would be clustered, with grades K-3 at Phoenicia and Woodstock, and 4-6 at Bennett.

In this letter to the editor, Phoenicia parent Liz Potter argues in favor of the "bookends" plan.

In her letter, Potter writes that some opponents of the "bookends" plan are threatening to veto the school budget if Phoenicia School is not closed. We have not heard this directly from any Onteora parent, but the issue of reconfiguration has been extremely divisive and controversial in the community.  --Ed.

Dear Onteora Community: