Bowman County Pioneer

Bowman County campus gets ready for fall with a few changes




The Bowman County school campus has stations allowing students to refill their water bottles, a feature which increases the hygiene at school, according to school officials. PHOTO/Brad Mosher

The Bowman County school campus has stations allowing students to refill their water bottles, a feature which increases the hygiene at school, according to school officials. PHOTO/Brad Mosher

There are changes at the Bowman County school campus which will be familiar for returning students, according to the superintendent.

Hygiene will play an important role in each educational day, said Superintendent Wayne Heckaman.

For him, the new school year is a challenge with some of the safest practices started a year ago remaining for the returning students.

“We are going to try to keep it as normal as possible,” he explained Wednesday after a school board meeting on campus. “There was a lot of anxiety last year and we are still going to have some potential unknowns, but we want to really get back to the academic side of things.

Still, there will be health and hygiene protocols that the superintendent said would remain a factor on the campus.

The state educational authorities regarding academics and athletics have yet to issue any guidance regarding the current Delta variant in the North Dakota. “I think right now, they are actively working on what kind of message to send out to us as school districts.

“Our Department of Education does a fantastic job on keeping us updated and abreast of information when they know it,” the superintendent said. “I think in North Dakota, all of our entities have built a remarkable relationship and work well together as a team. I feel confident that if anything needs to be communicated down, they will get it to us,” he explained.

There are some practices which the school year will not be starting with, wearing masks will be recommended and encouraged, the superintendent said. “… if they wish.”

“We are going to have to be mindful of the situation and the condition. We will take it day by day and week by week. If we must pivot and make some decisions, we will get together with the school district and the school board, and we will make the decisions together at the local level.”

Some of the changes will stay in effect.

“All of those protocols are important for us to continue our learning environment for our students.

“When we went through COVID, there were a lot of good things that we were able to put in place,” he said.

Hygiene was a big change over previous years, he explained, there is more awareness of personal hygiene as well as taking care of ourselves. Those are good things that we’ll continue to keep in place.”

According to Heckaman, some changes may not have been readily apparent. “We replaced our faucets with motion-sensor faucets and our hand towels with motion-sensors. You didn’t have to touch a faucet handle. You didn’t have to touch a towel dispenser.

“Those are all positive things that we did. All of those things were really nice upgrades to the facility which have been really good.”

The new bottle fillers on the campus are a good example of the upgrades, the superintendent said.

At some water fountains, the ability to add water to a student’s water bottle safely is an added feature.

The Elkay Bottle Filler features sanitary notouch sensor activation with automatic 20-second shut-off timer, according to the company.

At Bowman, the ezH20 units also show the filter status and have a counter for how many bottles are saved by refilling.

The ezH20 units are also dual use, with a water dispenser in addition to the water bottle refill capability. The company said its Flexi-Guard StreamSaver bubbler provides a flexible antimicrobial mouth guard to protect against injury and microorganisms and reduce water waste when describing the features.

“We have put in a lot of bottle fillers so that the kids didn’t have to drink from the faucets.”

One of the big changes is there will be no distance learning offered at the start of the semester. “We are going to be on-site.”

There have been no changes in ventilation on the campus yet, but the district is looking at looking closely when they must upgrade the HVAC system, he added.

“We are looking at adding some central air to our gymnasium and cafeteria. In every other place, we have air conditioning in the classrooms, but we didn’t make any substantial upgrades of that nature,” he said.

“Those are things a lot of school districts are looking at to see what we can or what could we do with our facility. How could we make some upgrades? Those are things we are interested in looking at … what kind of HVAC systems we want to put in there.”

Some of the decisions will be depending on the engineers and the designs of the schools, he explained. “They have to come to us and say here are some options for you to consider.”

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