School pursues grant, tech levy

ST. REGIS – The St. Regis School is hoping to get their hands on another Department of Commerce grant to continue to improve the school, after already utilizing one grant to help bring the school to ADA standards.

According to Interim Superintendent Peggy Anderson, the first grant for approximately $187,000 helped bring new, more accessible bleachers to the school, a larger access door into the gym, upgraded locker rooms with a new ADA shower stall, and an addition of a bathroom to the school and community library.

Currently only the bleachers have been completed, while the other projects have a finish date tentatively scheduled for August 1.

With the projects well underway, the school has now submitted another grant to the state Department of Commerce to help assess a variety of safety issues with the building.

“We’ve looked at issues nationally and looked at access to the buildings.” Anderson said.

The grant, which is for $550,000, would help address some of the concerns the staff have.

Currently there are six different entrances into the St. Regis School building. Although all but the main entrance is locked during the day, the current location of the door leaves safety issues unaddressed.

“Unless the secretary is at her desk and looking up, people can go either way without ever checking in,” Anderson explained.

Anderson plans to have the main entry door moved closer to the center of the complex. The new design would include two sets of doors, one of which visitors would need to be buzzed through in order to gain full access to the school building.  

The first set of doors would lead people into a room blocked off by another set of doors.

“As people come through the door here, they can’t get in,” Anderson said. “They can’t get into the building without getting buzzed in by the receptionist in the reception area.”

The new feature would eliminate a variety of safety concerns. Anderson explained that often times kids may open the door for someone who is knocking, without any fear of who that person is or what that person may do. The new locked door would eliminate this issue because the only way someone would be able to enter is by getting approval from the receptionist.

“The reason we are looking into this is just the issue of access to the building,” Anderson said. “Sometimes somebody might come in and take a child without you knowing and it might not be a parent that has custody of that child. Those kinds of things can happen. Intruders might not get any further than just this area here if we do something like that.”

The new, locked fire doors would also help teach parents to check in with the receptionist before entering the school.

If the new entry way was built, the St. Regis School would undergo some reorganization, moving the offices closer to the gymnasium and entryway. The special classes such as pre-k, language class and arts would also be moved to this area.

The grant would also help build “break out areas,” places where teachers or parents could bring students to work on projects.

“Safety is first and second we looked at educational design in terms of how can you get kids more involved in project related activities,” Anderson said.

She stressed that since this project would be funded through a grant, if that grant was awarded, the school would not be using local taxpayers’ money for the project.

“What we want the community to know is that we are using the other funds whenever possible to do things within the building,” Anderson said.

Although the new projects will not be funded by taxpayers, the school is hoping to get a technology levy funded on the November ballot. In the primary election the levy failed by a small margin of 18 votes.

Anderson feels it is important for the levy to be passed in order to provide the school with the most up-to-date technology, something she believes is essential in this day and age.

The school district is asking to levy $59,000 a year, approximately $17.91 per year on a home of a market value of $100,00, or $35.82 on a home with a market value of $200,000. If passed, it would result in a $9.02 increase per year.

 Ten years ago, the St. Regis School District approved a levy for $29,800 a year. According to Anderson, more is needed because of the rising demand of technology.

“Technology just keeps jumping and jumping. You think you’re caught up and then you look around and you are not,” Anderson said.

The money would go towards providing every elementary school student with an iPad to work with, something the high school students already have. It would also go towards expanding STEM, a science, technology, engineering and math-based program that aims at introducing these topics to kids at an early age.

Currently the school is training a teacher to work with both the seventh and eighth graders, and is also training another to work with the fourth grade students.

“Having the technology levy is really what we need in order to get those things going and the intent is not just to teach using technology, but to teach kids how to use technology so that when they leave St. Regis, they will have the skills to be able to do that,” Anderson explained.

The money would also go towards training teachers to use different programs, as well as possibly having a five-year program to rotate out older equipment.

If the levy is not approved, the school still plans to further their technology, however, it will come at a cost.

“We’re going to have to cut back on something else in order to be able to keep the technology that we have going,” Anderson said.

With the world becoming more technology savvy everyday, Anderson believes it’s important to keep the kids ahead of the curve, advancing their technology skills as much as possible.

“All the information that we want is all out around us. We just have to give the kids the tools they need to get that information out and technology is the way for us to get there,” Anderson said.