November 2021
This month’s update is really going to shed some light on what it’s like being a superintendent in an isolated school district in northern Michigan. We started out November with some heavy lake effect snow. As a kid growing up in the UP, I always watched the evening weather forecast, hoping we’d get snowed in and I would wake up the next morning to find out that school was canceled. Turns out, it’s not as much fun if you’re the one making the call – I woke up at 4:30 to get Lou and drive out to Adam’s trail to check his route. We both decided it was too dicey so we pulled the plug and we had our first snow day of the year.
M-77 at 7:25am on Wednesday, November 3rd
So began winter. I love snow so I was really excited. But, with the snow comes the cold. We are so lucky to have passed a bond a couple of years back which allowed us to buy new furnaces for the school. Did you know that the school used to be heated by coal? No thank you. Though, when one of our furnaces went out of commission earlier this month, I wish we could have shoveled some coal! We were pretty sure it wasn’t anything serious but it took some major troubleshooting by the HVAC company to figure out the problem. Turns out that when we got the furnaces inspected, the guy who put the cover back on accidentally bumped a shut off button and the thing wasn’t firing. After a week of cold and hours of head scratching, all we had to do was press a button under the cover…
Bond project high efficiency furnaces running great and keeping us warm.
So then we started making pasties. What could possibly happen when you make pasties, right? The school pasty sale is a decades-long tradition with a recipe that, and this is coming from a true pasty connoisseur if there ever was one, is totally legit. It was really heartwarming to see everyone laughing, talking, and working together to make over 500 pasties. What wasn’t really heartwarming was that the cafeteria drain backed up. I spent opening day eve grubbing the soil out in front of the school, searching for the cleanout that got buried with topsoil when the northside windows were replaced. That following week I was able to add “plumber” to my job description after snaking the drain clean.
It took a while but I finally found the cleanout.
Surely that would be the last major thing I’d have to deal with in November.
Nope.
Just when I thought I was out of the woods, our fan motor quit working. See, as many of you know, this school was built in 1927 and the heating system, though driven by a different source (gas vs coal), still works the same as it did back then. The radiators are heated by steam. Air then passes through them and into the classrooms and hallways. The fan that pushes the air through the ductwork is gigantic and used to require an old steam engine to power it. Nowadays it’s driven by a modern electrical motor. But even modern equipment fails. The school was still warm because as you now know, our furnaces were working like they should but it wasn’t as warm as it should have been. After lugging the 150 pound fan motor too and from Superior Electric in Marquette (shout out to Superior Electric!), we had a rebuilt motor that runs like it should again. I’m just so glad we got everything figured out. Now nothing else is going to happen…
Talk to you again in December.
