School board hears of sewer repair at Nome Elementary
The Nome Elementary School concluded a major sewer repair project earlier this month, following a significant blockage and the closure of several building services.
“We had some sewer blocking issues in mid-October,” Nome Public Schools Superintendent Jamie Burgess told the district’s Board of Education during their November meeting, held on Tuesday, November 9. “The kitchen had to be temporary closed, and the bathrooms on one side of the school.”
The school’s maintenance staff completed a temporary bypass but had concerns their quick fix would not last the winter. “This is not a new problem,” Burgess said. “This has recurred several times over the past several years.”
The Nome Joint Utility System ran a snake to see if they could determine the cause of the issue, but the snake broke inside the pipes. The school tried to run a camera through the sewer to determine the obstacle, but that, too, failed.
One local company, Southpaw Services, was the only one available to take on the emergency job, Burgess told the board. The contractor went foot by foot through the pipe to understand what might be causing the continued blockages and found several concerns.
“One of the main issues they saw as they went across with permafrost in this end of town, is the permafrost is shifting and changing,” Burgess continued. “Rather than a nice, straight angled shot, which is what we want, it was kind of doing [bends] which doesn’t do good flow of materials through the pipe. In addition, very, very close to where it connects to the sewer main line, there was a water main line that was over the top of it that had sunk and was compressing the sewer pipe.”
The school got permission to redo the lines and laid the sewer line on top of the water main, which is atypical.
The project, which cost an estimated $113,384.33 was approved unanimously and fully funded by the school board.
“Anybody that lives at this end of town knows that this is an ongoing issue,” said school board member Nancy Mendenhall. “Every house around us has had huge sinkholes.nI don’t know how many times we’ve had to bring in filters and had things dug up. I hope this time it’s resolved, but I’m not sure it is.”
In addition to approving the cost of the sewer repairs, Board of Education members had the opportunity to discuss future HVAC system updates in the district.
HVAC systems, which control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning throughout the buildings, were one of the building repairs funded, in part, by the American Recovery Plan following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Nome-Beltz schools HVAC system has been “on the fritz” for some time, and the school put out bids for new contractor.
“As we’ve discussed several times previously, the system has been offline for a while,” Burgess told the board. “It’s partially functioning for some of our buildings, but it’s been a big drain on our overworked maintenance department to have to basically manually make adjustments constantly for temperature and ventilation issues.”
The district received four bids from HVAC specialists and contractors and opted to go for the bid with the lowest price tag, from Siemens. In addition to the low cost, Burgess pointed out that the Siemens bid was the most detailed proposal of the four, and that Siemens staff had visited the district several times on their own dime.
“It’s nice to find a vendor that really wanted the actual project here, and we’re well under our projected budget,” Burgess said.
The board voted to award the project to Siemens for an anticipated cost not to exceed $718,569.22.
During their November school board meeting, board members heard updates from principals, student representatives, teachers, and Burgess on several ongoing issues facing the schools, including the COVID-19 outbreak.
“COVID fatigue is very real,” wrote Nome Elementary School Principal Elizabeth KorenekJohnson. “We are encouraged by the news that our young students are now eligible for vaccination, but also know we still have a long road ahead of us.”
Other principals shared similar sentiments in their reports to the board.
“An increase in COVID cases has added stress to our school activities and we have had a sharp increase in positive COVID cases within our student population,” according to the report from Nome-Beltz Middle High School Principal Jay Thomas and Assistant Principal Teriscovkya Smith. “The number of students in quarantine is at our highest levels since the start of the pandemic. Wearing masks appropriately throughout the day is an ongoing challenge.”
Burgess acknowledged the ongoing COVID-19 issues in the schools.
“It’s challenging, because we don’t have a playbook for this,” she told the school board. “It has been a challenging month. [We have] also had a lot of conversation around how this has been more challenging this year for our staff than last year. We really thought at the end of [last year] there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and by the end of the summer, everything was going to be great and we’re going to start to see recovery, and the rug got yanked out from everybody.”
Despite the ongoing issues with COVID-19, the elementary school is enthusiastic following the approval of a childhood COVID-19 vaccine.
“We are very excited that the pediatric version of the vaccine is now available for our parents to take advantage of if they so choose,” Burgess said. “Our temporary school
nurse is coordinating with Norton Sound [Health Corporation], and we will be offering a vaccine clinic on site at Nome Elementary in the next couple of weeks.”
The first vaccine clinic was slated for Wednesday, November 17.
“There’s definitely been an uptick in the atmosphere with the kids,” Korenek-Johnson said. “I greet kids out front every morning, and ever since [childhood vaccines began], I’ve had students coming in saying, ‘I got my vaccine,’ or ‘I’m getting my vaccine after school today,’ or ‘My appointment is tomorrow.’ There’s definitely an energy there.”
Burgess says the goal is to get 80 percent of students in each building vaccinated.
“Once we reach that [80 percent vaccinated] and the community cases start to drop back down toward single digits, then we’ll look to starting to let go of some of the mask wearing,” she said. “We’re hoping that’s making some progress.”
According to NSHC, more than 100 Nome children between the ages of 5-11 have already received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Currently, the district has a temporary school nurse placed at the elementary school as they seek a full-time nurse for next semester. The nurse is assisting with coordinating childhood vaccines, as well as other typical school nurse responsibilities.
In addition to bringing in a designated school nurse, the district is seeking a second cultural studies teacher at NBMHS for next semester. The Sitnasuak Native Corporation told Burgess just last week they would supply funding for the position. With Sitnasuak’s contribution, in addition to funding from the Nome Eskimo Community, the district will be able to offer language and cultural courses to high school students.
The student representative to the board, Lupe Callahan, updated the board members on student activities in the Nome-Beltz Middle High School, detailing sports successes, club participation and school events during COVID-19.
The board broke for an executive session during the meeting to perform an evaluation of Superintendent Burgess. The executive sessions are conducted privately, though board members offered Burgess nothing but praise for her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other ongoing school issues throughout the public portion of the meeting.
During the meeting, several students received student of the month awards, including NBMHS high school student Richard Cross, NBMHS middle school student Samuel Ahmasuk and Anvil City Science Academy eighth grader Sadie Fry.
Nome Beltz also awards teacher of the month and support staff of the month. This month, the teacher of the month award went to Justin Heinrich, and the support staff member of the month went to Dan Ward.
The school board will host a work session at 5:30 p.m. on November 23, and a regular meeting at 5:30 p.m. on December 14, in the Nome Elementary School library.