by Garrick Moritz, Gazette

            The Garretson School Board met in regular session on Oct. 9. The School Board declared an emergency because one of their three boilers has failed, so in order to have the building heated properly for the upcoming winter, they need to replace it right away and bypass the traditional building process.

            The board reviewed their consent agenda and had no additions or deletions.

            Bringing up the three new electric buses, Board President Shannon Nordstrom commented that signing the check was certainly the largest he’d ever signed for the school. The grant money was in the school’s accounts to cover the amount.

            Next the board was briefed by Jacob Schweitzer about the annual report for Fiscal Year 2022.  This report had been approved by the state and Schweitzer said he was satisfied and felt the process went well. He told the board that the auditing firm would be starting their work on the next audit at this end of this October. The board voted to approve the FY22 audit.

            Next the board discussed nominating a delegate to attend the Associated School Board of South Dakota assembly. Board President Nordstrom has done this for some time now, and said he’s willing to step aside if anyone else is willing to take it up, but that he will happily do it again. Nobody on the board wanted to step up and take the job, so Nordstrom volunteered to take it.

            Supt. Guy Johnson then asked the board to make an exception to the handbook policy, requesting the ability to let 6th, 7th and 8th grade boys to be able to form a single team for basketball. As of right now, with 7th & 8th combined, they only have seven players. They would like the possibility to recruit from the sixth grade as well.

            “Last year we combined the 7th and 8th grade boys to make a single team, so this year we’re asking something similar,” he said.

            Board member Jodi Gloe had no objection, she just worried that a team comprised of all three grades would be less play time for each player. Board member Tana Clark wanted to make sure that if these three grades were in said pool of players, that every sixth-grade student would have an equal chance to play and that the staff and coaches weren’t effectively cherry-picking students they wanted to play up.

            Supt. Johnson fielded both concerns, saying that if enough students came forward from each grade then each would get a team, but as is, he thought it likely that only a single team would be needed. He also said that yes, anyone who was interested in playing would be given an opportunity. This satisfied Gloe and Clark as they respectively motioned and seconded the approval of this exception.

            Next, Superintendent Johnson brought forth an emergency proposal for the board.

            “Quite simply, one of our boilers has reached the end of its service life and needs to be replaced at once,” he said. “Ordinarily, when we have to do a major infrastructure item like this we have to bid the project out. However, with a declared emergency, the law allows the board to act more swiftly to make a purchase and replacement. The school has three boilers and this one was a high efficiency unit that was installed in 2002 during the school’s expansion, so it has served our district well for 20-plus years. We have one other large boiler which is not an efficient unit, and a smaller backup unit that mostly gets used during the coldest parts of the winter in January and February. They will not be adequate to our needs by themselves this coming winter. If we want to heat the building, and have it installed in timely manner, say before December, we need to move forward quickly. Some may recall that back in 2018, when we replaced our chiller, our engineer noted that it was reaching the end of its service life, and so we made replacing it an alternate option on the bid. The board, at the time, rejected the alternate for just the base bid. At the time, the estimated expense was between $75 to $125 thousand dollars. The quote we received from a local contractor had the cost at about $80 thousand, which considering all the price hikes and inflation of the last few years I found to be an excellent price.”

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