School Board swears in new member
The Board of Education of the Nome Public Schools met Tuesday with plenty of work on the table. There was only one action item but a new board member was sworn in, new officers were elected and committee assignments were made.
The action item voted on was an approval of the revised FY21 Budget. It passed unanimously.
New board member Jill Peters was sworn in to whoops and clapping from those in attendance. The meeting was held in the elementary school library while some of the board members attended telephonically. The new president of the board is Sandy Martinson, taking over for Brandy Arrington, who decided not to re-run for school board. Dr. Barb Amarok is the new vice president of the board and Jill Peters was named treasurer.
The board members expressed their thanks to Brandy Arrington for her service from 2014 to 2020. “Great leaders don’t set out to be leaders they set out to make a difference,” reads the inscription on the plaque created for Brandy. “I really appreciate what Brandy was able to do as chair,” said board member Nancy Mendenhall.
Maddy Alvanna-Stimpfle gave a report on the Inupiaq immersion kindergarten, which has been up and running for six weeks. “It’s been going very well,” she said. “It’s amazing to see how much these kids have learned in just a month and a half. What we’ve done is we’ve created a space for our language to have a home, a heartbeat. And we’re doing it in a space where it wasn’t allowed before.”
“It’s a wonderful thing to hear something talked about for at least 20 years and then all of a sudden it just converges, the energies just come together and, wow, it happens,” Nancy Mendenhall said.
The ACSA student of the month is Hanalori Callahan. Nome-Beltz Middle School’s student of the month is Nevaeh Richard. The High School student of the month is Kenosha Kiyuklook. Support staff of the month is NES behavioral specialist David O’Neill. Colleen Johnson is the teacher of the month.
In the superintendent’s report, Jamie Burgess updated the board on the teacher housing project. They are working hard to figure out how to do teacher development in the midst of COVID-19. Finding substitute teachers has been a problem. The student count is underway and the number will probably come out higher than predicted, but lower than in past years. A lot of staff members did not travel over the summer but now many would like to as they haven’t seen family members for so long. “They will have to quarantine when they come back,” she said.
Snow days will be distance learning days. “We’ve finished up six weeks of in-person schooling,” said Burgess. “We know that’s not the case with many districts around the state and the country.” Forty to 60 percent of students do not have good internet connections so the schools will be doing packets with paper and pencil lessons. The problem is many households have multiple kids and they all need to use the internet, which may be a phone. “We want to be sure we had something that was quality and accessible to every single one of our students,” said Burgess. “Equity continues to be an issue, especially when it comes to internet.”
Student representative Stephan Anderson gave a thorough report on how things are going at Nome-Beltz.
The meeting was adjourned after two hours and ten minutes.