Kimball school board approves changes to football lighting

The Kimball school board approved a fix for lighting at the football stadium at Monday’s regular monthly meeting.

The board discussed in a previous meeting how the lighting was considered dangerous. As a result of this dangerous situation, several precautions have been taken in order to prevent an accident from occurring until the lights could be properly repaired.

Bids from High West Wiring were brought before the board in an attempt to fix the lighting. Due to the nature of the issues with the football lights, the bid from High West was put in three parts. The first bid was for a 600 amp panel with three associated breakers, splices and extensions to connect the breakers. The proposal included the labor, material and equipment needed to complete the installation. The cost of this portion of the bid was $6,416.59, and it would be performed on the 600 amp MDP for the football field.

The second bid includes labor, material and equipment to complete the installation of junction boxes, hubs, wire, conduit, splices and cord to fix issues discussed. The bid was $5,855.47 for that portion of the project, and it included the football field pole top light and circuit repairs.

The third bid was $5,313.60 and was for the football field lower junction boxes. It included labor, material and equipment, as well as junction boxes hubs, disconnects and splices.

High West does not have a lift that could reach high enough to get to the tops of the football field’s lights, so it will borrow one from Clean Harbors.

“There was some talk of lowering the football field lights so that High West Wiring would be able to get to the tops of the lights. However, that was not recommended because of the shadows it would cause on the field,” said Kimball Superintendent Marshall Lewis.

If the lights were lowered, the light would end up being in a more concentrated area and would not light the field entirely as is done now. The height of the lights currently allows the light from all the poles to overlap each other and cover a large area without shadows.

“We have been able to get the lift from Clean Harbors, and with the help of Mike Schadegg, we have been able to get the lift to us to use. So we see this relationship and have confidence in it so we will be able to use the lift for High West to perform needed maintenance on the lights in the future,” Lewis said.

The board approved the bids and the project up to the amount of $25,000, in the event of unforeseen costs.

At the top of the meeting, Michael Ferguson was present to show the board the fliers the civics class made to inform the community about motivational speaker Sam Glenn’s visit. Ferguson recently attended a city council meeting at which he and the high school civics class requested KENO funds to bring in Glenn. Ferguson boasted that the civics class would handle all the advertising and work hard to get the word out about Glenn.

“We believe he can really help turn around the apathy in our community,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson passed out the fliers that have been posted throughout Kimball. Board members praised Ferguson and the civics class for their efforts.

The high school civics class will also hold a candidate forum on Oct. 23. It will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the student center.

For those not familiar with the student center, they can enter the main entrance of the school and it is in the main common area just past the front office. The forum is open to the public and will showcase local contested races for public office and the candidates running for office.

The board also made corrections to some of the wording of board policies to reflect the current procedures when it comes to handling bodily fluids and sick children. One change is that of the refusal to administer medication policy.

“School personnel may refuse to give a medication at school if after reasonable and prudent research by a school health care professional a decision has been made that the dosage prescribed exceeds recommended industry standard, when a drug or substance is not currently approved by the FDA, or when a drug or substance is to be delivered in a manner inconsistent with FDA approval,” according to Student Health Policy 505.2.

Basically, if a student is to be administered medication outside an approved amount by the FDA, the school can make the decision to refuse to administer the medication. What this means is that the student would have to have a parent administer the medication. This is to prevent the school from being liable for wrongly administering medication.

The school board approved a request from the music program for out of state travel, and discussed future projects on modernization and maintenance. Board members discussed the idea of having a potential five-year plan in order to potentially avoid surprises like that of the football lights.

The next board of education meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Nov. 10 in the city council chambers at city hall.