Building projects wrap up at NYM

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

With school just around the corner, the New York Mills School District is preparing for the start of the 2022-23 school year.

During its regularly scheduled meeting last Monday night, the school board heard several brief updates on back to school preparations about everything from fall activities to the bus routes.

Seven new teachers will be joining the staff at NY Mills School, including six teachers in the elementary wing alone. 

Several of those teachers were in attendance last Monday night to introduce themselves to the school board. 

In addition to the new teachers, the school board heard that the school bus routes were once again looked at over the summer. NY Mills School Superintendent Blaine Novak said there are currently nine bus routes that cover approximately 183 square miles. While he said there may be some changes to the bus routes during the year, depending upon new students and those who may leave the school district, the goal is to limit the amount of time students of the NY Mills School District are on the bus each day.

“We don’t want any of our kids in the district to be on the bus for more than an hour,” he said.

That may mean students who open enroll into NY Mills will have to ride the bus for slightly more than an hour, but the hope was to make that the exception and not the norm.

In other news

• Acknowledged the following donations: $4,000 from the Ottertail Lions Club for teacher needs, $50,000 from an anonymous donor with half going for scholarships and the other half of the athletic department, as well as $750 from the NY Mills Lions Club for football boosters. 

• Heard that the school district’s back to learning plan was slightly tweaked in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Novak said one of the only major changes dealt with quarantines when a family member tested positive for COVID-19. The new guidelines follow federal regulations that state people should just monitor for symptoms and not necessarily immediately go into quarantine for a close contact. 

• Approved the hiring of Shanetta Reitmeyer as a paraprofessional, Kenna Salo as a volunteer volleyball coach, Kelly Tumberg as a home to school liaison, Alicia Page as the high school secretary, Molly Perry as a pre-k paraprofessional and Nathalie Hideroa as a paraprofessional. 

• Accepted the resignation of Mandy Erp as high school secretary and Corrine Meech as paraprofessional.