By By ERIN VER BERKMOES / Niles Daily Star
NILES - Promised district improvements in Niles can now begin.
The Niles Community Schools Board of Education, approved two bids at Monday nights meeting.
One of the bids is for replacement roof work on Northside school. This approval will continue to fulfill the Board's promise to the community to maintain a program of regular roof repairs. The repairs will be paid by the Building and Site Improvement with Hoekstra Roofing Company, from Kalamazoo being the recommended as the one to do the job.
The second of the bids that was approved was one for mowing equipment.
This plan transfers the work to the custodial and maintenance employees rather than having and outside source complete the work. This plan is going to be accomplished without having to add any additional staff.
For this plan to succeed the district needs to invest in some mowing equipment. In doing this the savings will be an estimated $20,000 -$30,000 for the first year and then over $60,000 the following year.
The board plans to accept the bid from Spartan Distributors, Inc. of Sparta, for three mowing machines with 72-inch mowing decks and bagging units.
The board also passed a motion that they be allowed to attend a school finance workshop on March 28, at Southwestern Michigan College.
The board was also presented with the enrollment data for the district for the last month. The report shows that there was a slight increase in the enrollment of students. The current enrollment is 4029 students while last month the count was 4016.5. That is an increase of 15.5.
And finally the board was able to take a look at some thank you letters from school administrators thanking groups and members of the community for gifts given to the district.
Cindy Wickham, principal of Northside thanked the Psi Iota Xi Sorority for their donation to the Mentor-A-Mom program. While Niles High School Principal Betty Perkins thanked artist Nancy Drew for her donation of a painting in memory of former teacher Joe Szakas. And finally Cedar Lane Principal Rich Klemm thanked Wal-Mart for the donation of a $50 gift card.