By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
With fresh snow on the mountains and more cold weather in the forecast, the school district says repairs will soon begin on the heating system at Blatchley Middle School.
Problems first became apparent last winter.
With all five of the building’s heat pumps in need of replacement, District Superintendent Frank Hauser told the School Board on Tuesday that two of the long anticipated devices are now in Sitka, with the other three to be delivered soon.
“Heat pumps for Blatchley have started to arrive, so this is exciting and good news for everyone,” Hauser told the board. “Two are here and our contractor has received the shipping bill from AML for the others, so we’re hoping that they get here quickly.”
In August, the Assembly approved up to $600,000 for repairs to the school’s heating system.
Hauser said the building has some heat from what he called “band-aid” repairs, but he’s looking forward to the permanent fix.
“We’re excited for that process to be started,” he said.
Blatchley Principal Ben White told the Sentinel in a separate interview that repairs can’t come soon enough. “We’re approaching a calendar year of no heat in a middle school of 300 students,” White said.
The boiler for the Blatchley swimming pool has provided some heat to certain parts of the building, he said.
“You might hear people say, ‘Well, Blatchley has some heat.’ That is true, but that heat is specific to specific rooms. It’s not like we just have low heat in all the rooms… The rooms either have heat or do not have heat. We had rooms that got down to 50 last year, for sure,” he said.
To help cope with the cold last year, he added, teachers and students bundled up in outdoors gear.
“I had teachers literally teaching and in wool hats and skiing jackets and gloves. Because if you’re at 50 degrees for five and a half or six hours of your day, that gets pretty cold,” he said.
The first two replacement heat pumps arrived in town last week, and Hauser said he estimates that each of the five systems being replaced will require ten days to install.
In addition to his update on the Blatchley repairs, Hauser told the School Board Tuesday that districtwide enrollment is lower than predicted.
The unofficial result of the October census shows 1,116 students in attendance instead of the 1,125 projected in the budget. The number of students determines the amount of funding to the district under the state’s Base Student Allocation.
Hauser noted that the numbers aren’t official until reviewed by the state.
The superintendent also spoke about plans for the additional funds for student activities that are expected will be raised by the marijuana sales tax approved in the October municipal election. Hauser hopes the money will lower the financial barrier of entry for students.
“We will expand and remove barriers for students,” he said. “The passing of Proposition One will have a significant positive impact on advancing the strategy... Establishing a student activity scholarship fund assists families with activities participation fees and other costs.”
He said eligibility for scholarship funds will be established in the already existing free and reduced price meal application process.
The board voted unanimously and without discussion to approve a budget revision and also voted to add a Pacific High School representative as a student representative on the School Board, which already has a student representative from Sitka High School, Felix Myers.
“I’m in full support of adding a new member from Pacific High School,” Myers said. “Having more student voices and hearing different perspectives and also getting that opportunity to those students is very important.”
The board also discussed but did not vote on a proposal to change board meeting procedure, taking public testimony on agenda items earlier in meetings. Currently, the public may comment on non-agenda items during the persons-to-be-heard section of the meeting, but comments on agenda items must wait for that item to come up for discussion.
“I would be in favor of adding a persons-to-be-heard item on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting,” board member Tristan Guevin said. “But I would want to keep the persons-to-be-heard within each agenda item so that we’re providing two opportunities… I think any expansion of public input is a good thing.”
The board will meet again on Dec. 7 at 6 p.m. at Centennial Hall.
