Nome School Board takes on ten action items
The Board of Education of the Nome Public Schools met in person for the first time in a while. To have more space for social distancing they chose to meet at the Nome-Beltz Middle and High School RC room. Connection via Zoom was also enabled. On the agenda was a list of ten action items and because of the large amount of work to get done the meeting lasted over two hours.
The first action item was the approval of 2021-2022 teacher contracts. “It’s that time of year when we are prepared to offer contracts to our certified teaching staff,” said Superintendent Jamie Burgess. “Tenured teachers automatically receive contracts.” Nine teachers are completing their third year and will become tenured next year. Burgess recommended the board approve the contracts and they were approved unanimously.
The second action item was the approval of the 2021-2022 food service contract with NANA Management Services. “One of the unintended consequences of the COVID going to red is we saw a significant drop off in students that were accessing meals on the bus service when we were in red,” said Burgess. “NANA Management Services requested that we adjust the meal pricing structure.” An addendum was put together that has the district pay a higher per-meal price if the number of meals drops below a certain number. With students in the schools, the numbers are back to normal so there’s no issue with meal prices. The adjustment of meal prices only affected the four and a half week period in red.
Third up was the first reading of some board policies. The first section modifies the employment of retired teachers wording to bring it into line with Alaska state statute. A student and family privacy rights section adds wording to address the use of biometric information in the district. A new system using finger prints is soon to be put into use. And lastly, the wording No Student Left Behind has been changed to Every Student Succeeds Act. This reflects a change in the name of the program at the federal level.
Item number four approves a contract for two years extended to business manager Genevieve Hollins, who has been with the district for five years. “She’s extremely timely, everything is accurate, and she’s trained payroll clerks remotely,” said Superintendent Burgess. The item was approved unanimously.
Number five approves the purchase of the Lexia Reading Program. Nome Elementary School has a proposal to purchase a three-year licensing agreement with Lexia Learning Systems. This implements the Lexia Qualified Reading Program which is part of their ongoing work under the literacy grant. “It’s another tool in the toolbox to provide some intervention for students and it’s also helpful for progress monitoring,” said Burgess. The cost is covered. This is the formal ratification of the purchase.
Acceptance of a proposal for an internet service provider is item number six. There were four bidders and Leonard DRS, the current provider, was selected. Total monthly cost for the 75 megabyte per minute service is $65,823.19 per month, which includes firewall, network monitoring, and a variety of other network services. Most of the cost is offset by e-rate funding, which covers 90 percent. The district’s share comes to $5,337.98 a month. The contract will be in place for five years and the cost is slightly lower than what the district is currently paying.
Number seven approves repair of a Nome Elementary School oil tank. “We’ve had a long-standing issue with the fuel oil day tank located at the elementary school,” said Superintendent Burgess. “There have been intermittent leakage issues for a few years. We’ve had a lot of short-time fixes and we need a permanent solution.” Pinnacle Mechanical has been chosen to do the work for $56,938. The cost comes out of capital improvement fund.
Next up was an iPad replacement purchase. As the devices age, they can become unsupported. This purchase will replace all iPads currently in use by children in grades K through 2. New seventh generation iPads that have more storage space than the six- year-old ones in use will be acquired. This was planned and budgeted for.
Number nine is the approval of Chromebook replacement. Ninety more Chromebooks will be added. This will mean every child in the district has a device, whether an iPad, a Mac Book or a Chromebook The purchase also includes Chrome Education upgrades the district needs. The funds are available and planned and are in the tech department’s budget.
The final item was the approval of interactive display purchase. “Last year we purchase interactive displays,” said Burgess. The total cost including shipping for eight boards with mounts should not exceed $40,000. The money is in the general fund budget. One board member commented that the technology department is high maintenance. “Technology is that way,” said Jim Shreve, the head of that department. “You can either spend money to keep up with it or spend a lot of money to catch up,” he said.
In the Superintendent’s report Jamie Burgess reported they’ve received notice of the second round of COVID funding. “This is called Coronavirus Relief and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act,” she said. “We received a significantly higher amount than our first round of funding through the CARES Act. We received $810,216.” The money can be used in more ways than were allowed in the first round. They can go to pay for summer school and any additional school repairs needed to reduce transmission of the Covid virus, and any measures to improve air quality in the school. “We are working with our leadership team to determine best use of these funds. We have several years to expend them.” There may be additional rounds of funding.
“Our new teacher apartment building is rolling along,” said Burgess. “We’ve done an informal survey of the vaccination status of our employees. This was a completely anonymous survey, but was biased toward those individuals who are vaccinated and would probably be more likely to respond.” About 60 percent of the district’s employees including maintenance and custodial employees as well as NACTEC responded and 86 percent of those indicated they were vaccinated. So of the 60 percent who did respond 86 percent have had at least the first shot of the vaccine. “That bodes well for keeping our staff healthy and helps reduce any risk of transmission in our schools.”
“Basketball has actually started,” said Burgess. Alumni and other inhouse teams have stepped forward to provide the Nanooks with competition. Unalakleet played in Nome this past weekend with NACTEC house being used to house the Unalakleet teams. Everybody is testing before they travel. “We’re working with NW Arctic in hope of possible bringing Kotzebue in,” said Burgess. “We’re hoping to put things together to give our teams as much as we possibly can.”
Student Board Member Stephen Anderson reported when the students returned to school they re-started a number of activities. NYO, basketball, and an intern program with KNOM radio all are back up and running. Youth Court should start up soon.
“We’re grateful to have the kids back in person,” said Nome Elementary Principal Elizabeth KorenekJohnson. “We just can’t say that enough.” The school climate connectedness survey underway. Also they’re looking at school climate from a staff perspective. “Communication between parents and teachers is probably better this year than it ever has been in the past. We started learning a lot about the importance of that during distance delivery last spring. A lot of those lessons apply whether we’re in distance or in person.” They did their first Facebook live story time, which will be a weekly event on 5:30 p.m. on Monday on the Nome Elementary Facebook page.
“With the vaccinations happening, staff morale is on the rise,” said Teriscovkya Smith, Nome-Beltz Middle and High School vice principal. “They get the get the sense that there’s an end in sight to all of this. On the flip side we’re in that situation again where our substitute pool is extremely low so that puts pressure on teachers who want to be out for justifiable reasons. They know that when we have one teacher out, we lose our counselor and our behavioral specialist. They become the substitutes.”
The cheer squad has finally found a place to practice. They’ve been moving around a lot but now are in a space in the cafeteria.
“I think we are very lucky that we’ve had the amount of face time with our kids that we’ve had this year,” said Superintendent Burgess in concluding the meeting. “It still has been a big challenge. We know that our kids are going to benefit from this.”