Nome School Board approves Washington DC trip payment
Last Tuesday in their regular meeting Nome Public School Board approved the payment of the eighth grade and senior class trips to Washington D.C. in the spring, at a cost of over $170,000.
The senior class is taking the trip to make up for their inability to go during COVID-19 when they were in eighth grade.
The overall costs will be covered by fundraising through students and Title 1C governmental funding and will be of no cost to the district, Burgess said.
Anvil City Science Academy is not included in the funding because they chose to have families pay for the trip costs upfront and fundraising costs will reimburse them later, according to Burgess.
Board President Darlene Trigg said it concerns her that ACSA is not included in the funding. “Having families front the cost of a large expenditure… worries me that we’re excluding people,” Trigg said.
During her superintendent report Jamie Burgess said NPS is continuing to encourage the City to peruse a revenue bond to build the teacher/police housing project. City Manager Glenn Steckman informed Burgess recently that the City received a large grant to go toward teacher housing. The City and NPS will be having conversations on how to fund the rest of the project that won’t be covered.
“If we can get that off the ground we know that will have a big impact on our community in general and our ability to get staff,” Burgess said.
Principal Teriskovkya Smith presented the three students of the month for Nome-Beltz: Eleventh grader Atlas K. Boeckmann, tenth grader Jaiden Pennini and seventh grader Noel Pardee.
Assistant Principal of Nome-Beltz Dr. Michael Akes has been reviewing the schools’ attendance, incidents and consequences data in an effort to reduce exclusionary discipline. The review showed that student attendance has gone down from 91 percent in September to 85 percent in November. It showed an increase in skipping and reduction in tardies toward the end of the semester across the school. The total consequences inflicted went down from 99 in September to 78 in November.
Last Thursday Governor Mike Dunleavy released his proposed budget for the 2024 year and the Base Student Allocation was not increased from $5,960 where it’s stayed since 2017. Many school districts and The Association for Alaska School Boards were lobbying for a $1,655 increase per student to keep up with inflation.