Nome school board welcomes new teachers to NPS
“Say, ‘newbies!’”
Some of Nome’s newest teachers lined up for a photo at the monthly school board meeting last Tuesday, Sept. 13, ahead of the storm that interrupted life in town.
“We have a really, really good crop of teachers this year,” said Nome School District Superintendent Jamie Burgess after she introduced each of them.
Though new to Nome Schools, several of the educators have experience teaching in other parts of Alaska. Nicholas Settle, the new assistant principal of Nome Elementary School, previously taught in Kivalina. Susan Dyer, a secondgrade teacher, taught in places like Dillingham and Wainwright. Middle school science teacher Emily Annas comes from St. Mary’s School District.
The new hires are especially welcome as the district has struggled to fill some key vacancies. There is still a need for substitute teachers, the maintenance department is a little short-staffed, and some permanent teaching positions remained unfilled by the time the school year started last month. For example, the district is still seeking an assistant principal for Nome-Beltz Middle and High School, and it was not able to continue its popular Inupiaq immersion program into second grade at NES because they were not able to find a teacher.
“It’s very well received, and the classes are full,” said NES Principal Elizabeth Korenek-Johnson. She expected the program to grow, “but it will take time.” Twenty-three kindergarteners were newly enrolled in class with Kiminaq (Maddy Alvanna-Stimpfle) while the other immersion teacher, Annie Conger, moved up to first grade with her cohort of 21 students. Meanwhile, the second graders coming out of two years of learning in Inupiaq moved up to Katie Burdon’s class as a cohort “to the get the support they need for English language instruction,” Korenek-Johnson said. “We know they’re going to just soar because they have good foundational language instruction already.”
Both NES and Nome-Beltz have vacancies for special education teachers and paraprofessionals, which Burgess said “continues to be a challenge.” She commended the students who are working a couple hours a day in special education to help fill that need. “We really like the opportunity to have those students come and work with kids and think about becoming a special education teacher,” Burgess said.
Nome’s families, too, stepped in to patch another important resource that was missing when the school year began: A fence around the NES playground.
The contractor hired by the district to replace the fence had yet to finish the job, meaning NES had to get creative with its recess plans. The community helped offer supervision for the schoolkids in lieu of a fence. Korenek-Johnson said in her report to the board that 49 individuals from the community volunteered a total of 105.25 hours in the school.
Board member Darlene Trigg praised the outpouring of support from the volunteers.
“It’s just really great to know that we’re in the kind of community that stands together in that way when we have a challenge that impacts our kids,” Trigg said. “It just makes me proud to be part of Nome.”
In other business
The board tackled several other items of business: It considered a half-million-dollar proposal to repair the Nome-Beltz pool; it reviewed a long list of revisions to its board policies; and it approved a budget increase for the district’s energy management system.
The current budget for Fiscal Year 2023 is $16,551,621. In her financial report, Genevieve Hollins said that with nearly 17 percent of this time period now passed, about 7.3 percent of that budget had been expended while about 14.1 percent had been received.
Now that a few weeks of the school year have passed, Nome’s schools have their enrollment numbers available. NES currently has 333 students registered. NomeBeltz has 305 students enrolled. Principal Lisa Leeper reported that Anvil City Science Academy has 13 students in 8th grade, 16 in 7th grade, 16 in 6th grade and 15 in 5th grade.
In her written report, Burgess said that the number of COVID-19 cases in Nome were considered low, although the Nome Census Area continues to be labeled as having a “High Community Level.” She referred to a memo from Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink and Acting DEED Commissioner Heidi Teshner regarding the state’s approach to COVID mitigation for this school year. In the CDC’s most recently updated guidelines for schools, a “test to stay” protocol is no longer recommended, nor is quarantine for most close contacts. The district will continue to have home tests available for families to pick up.
Burgess reported that the state Department of Education and Early Development has funded two reimbursement projects: the ACSA restroom remodel and the boiler rebuild.
These funds will go into the district’s capital improvement program fund for future projects.
Burgess asked for an additional $150,000 to complete Phase I of a project to construct a direct digital control (DDC) system which manages Nome Schools’ energy systems. The board had previously approved the project with a budget of $800,000. The budget increase was approved and will use money from district’s COVID-19 American Rescue Plan funds.
The board also approved a proposal from the company Polar Pools to refurbish the Nome-Beltz pool at a cost of $503,450, which will covered by the City of Nome. “The decision has been made to go back to a chlorination sanitation system because the saltwater system has degraded a lot of the components over time,” Burgess said. “And Polar Pools will do that sanitation change, replace some of the damaged piping, rebuild damaged pumps and put an automation system in there for chemicals.”
The board’s policy review committee had met on Aug. 29, to assess several policies, and during last week’s meeting, these items were presented to the board for a first reading approval. Many of these revisions involved minor tweaks in language, but there were a few new additions. For example, given the high cost of energy, one new policy deals with conserving power: “The Superintendent or designee shall establish energy use reduction goals, monitor energy consumption and encourage employees and students to conserve resources,” the new policy item reads.
Another newly proposed policy would direct the superintendent to develop a districtwide data protection program.
The next regular meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 11 at the NES Library.