The Crookston Public Schools held a Safety Committee Meeting on Wednesday afternoon in the Crookston High School Science Atrium to discuss various issues in each school. Crookston Buildings & Grounds Director Rick Niemela led the meeting. The Committee is made up of Board Members Washington School Head Custodian Ron Ostgaard, Brent Evenson of the High School, High School Science Teacher Jessica Hanson, Highland Elementary School Instructional Assistant Tammy Warcken, and District Office Business Manager Laura Lyczewski.
The Board quickly approved the meeting minutes of their last meeting. Washington Elementary School Head Custodian Ron Ostgaard brought an issue to the Board of adding lights to the outside of the North and West sides of the school for people and children wanting to cross the street or play in the fields. So drivers can see them if they cross or run into the road during the nighttime hours. Highland Elementary School Instructional Assistant Tammy Warcken brought up a similar issue with the East side of their school with a streetlight flickering in the parking lot and the need for light on the approach to the east side school during nighttime hours. “We’re talking about Ottertail putting up a streetlight for the East entrance to the parking lot. There is a rather dark area in the street that makes it rather hard to see the approach as you turn into it after dark,” explained Crookston Buildings and Grounds Director Rick Niemela. The Board agreed that they would reach out to Ottertail to complete the streetlights for Highland School.
Warcken continued with concerns about the ventilation systems in the school, voicing that parents wanted to know the filter system and Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) ratings of the filters the schools use. Buildings and Ground Director Rick Niemela responded that the vents had a maximum MERV rating of 8. The representative mentioned that the Federal Government recommended a MERV rating of 13 for an end of a pandemic situation and asked if there was a chance the schools could upgrade their ventilation systems. But Niemela responded that the current air handlers couldn’t handle ratings any higher. “The recommendations from the Federal Government are fairly high, and equipment that the school has that has been installed would be costly to change all of our air handlers over, but our current air handlers will only handle a MERV of 8. So, it doesn’t filter quite as well as a MERV of 13 but at the same time, just turning the air over makes a big difference in the quality of the environment in the buildings,” Niemela explained.
The High School representative, Brent Evenson, then mentioned that the water fountains around the school were ready to be reactivated. Mainly the ones down by the band room and that have water bottle fillers would be functional again by the end of the day. “Once the CDC’s new recommendations came out two weeks ago so that the masks could come off in the transportation modes and in the buildings. The water fountains can be put back into use. For the past two years, we’ve been using just the bottle fillers, and the bubblers have been shut off. Now we can turn the bubblers back on, and you can start to use the water fountains as normal,” Buildings and Ground Director Rick Niemela explained.
The next Safety Committee meeting will occur in May in the Crookston High School.
