Band shell to get a makeover

By CHARITY SMITH

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Bessemer — The band shell on Massie Field will be getting a “makeover,” and just in time for the July 10 graduation ceremony at A.D. Johnston High School in Bessemer.

The Bessemer Area School Board on Monday approved a band shell booster project to put new vinyl siding on the band shell as well as painting the interior.

“So it’s getting a little facelift,” said Dan Niemi, school district superintendent and principal of A.D. Johnston High School.

The project volunteers include Dick Matrella a school board member, along with Nick Heikkila, and his father, Paul Heikkila, Niemi said. There are also student athletes helping on the project.

The school board also has obtained two U.S. Department of Agriculture grants. One of the grants will help purchase 98 Chromebooks, playground equipment for Washington Elementary School that is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, new school-bus radios with a repeater, a home base, and a trailer.

The second grant will go toward the $38,623 purchase of a 2020 Ford F-250 pickup truck with a snowplow and fiberglass topper. The school will obtain a government Ford Fleet number for the vehicle. The grant will pay 75% of these purchases.

“We were able to get some good stuff that we needed and it came at a really good time,” Niemi said. “Not so good in the fact that we might end up getting budget cuts, but it’s very good in the fact that we’re getting some things that we do need and it’s $100,000 worth of equipment and we are ending up paying around $21,000. So that’s really a good deal.”

The school will also be using bond monies from 2019 to purchase 22 locker banks with key pads for the students to keep and charge their Chromebooks. Each locker bank is 6 feet high with 10 small lockers totaling 220 lockers.

Niemi said several other types of lockers were considered but there was a potential for problems with them.

“We looked at keyed lockers, but then we said we are going to have to find keys, and have extra keys and that’s going to be a nightmare,” Niemi said. “Then we said we’ll get ones where you can put padlocks on them. Well half the kids don’t put padlocks on their lockers. So we’re thinking they are going to get broken into or stolen. So we went with a keypad that is attached to each locker,” he said.

Students create their own push button combination on a keypad for their lock-code. The lockers will have power supplies for both phones and laptops.

“So they could trade their phone for their Chromebook and let their phone charge,” Niemi said. “Then we don’t have to worry about phones in classes. That would be nice.”

Niemi said that 110 lockers will fit in an 8-foot by 6-foot area.

“We actually have a blank wall on the ends of our lockers, and they will fit perfectly there,” he said.

Anywhere from 30 to 40 Chromebook lockers will be placed on the middle school floor and the rest at ADJ, Niemi said.

Students will have the Chromebook and locker assigned to them for the entire time they are at the school.

The school district is looking at selling some of the older kettle drums for the band.

“They are older kettle drums but maybe another school can use them,” Niemi said. “We have new ones.”

In other business, the school board approved:

—The 2020-21 athletic, food service and general budgets.

—The hire of Richard Matrella as head teacher at ADJ.

—Set the non-homestead millage rate of 18 mills that passed in 2019. The previous millage was 17.9694.