SOUTH BEND - South Bend School District is in the news with the hiring of a new facilities & transportation director, and for receiving three grants for important upgrades on the school campus.
According to Superintendent Dr. Jon Tienhaara, the school district hired Noah Rumbles as the facilities & transportation director.
"Noah Rumbles has been hired as the district's new facilities & transportation director," Dr. Tienhaara told the Herald. "Mr. Rumbles takes over officially on July 1, 2022, and is replacing Wyatt Kuiken, who recently accepted a teaching job at Willapa Valley.
"We are excited to welcome Noah to our team in South Bend," Tienhaara added. "I think almost everyone in our area knows him through his plumbing business, and would agree he is a very talented individual, basically a jack-of-all-trades. With all of the facility projects we have going, I was very pleased to have so many qualified applicants, and we believe Noah is a great choice."
Dr. Tienhaara thanked Kuiken for his tenure at South Bend School District.
"I want to thank Wyatt Kuiken for his many years of service to South Bend," Tienhaara said. "He is one of the hardest workers I have known. Wyatt is a very talented mechanic and facility manager, and he has offered to help us in any way possible as we transition to Mr. Rumbles. I wish Wyatt the very best as he pursues his teaching goals."
$586,000 in Grants
South Bend School District recently received $586,000 in grand funding, according to Tienhaara. Student technology received $290,000.
"We are pleased to have been selected as a recipient of the Digital Equity & Inclusion grant recently awarded by OSPI," Tienhaara reported. "The grant will provide a new computer device for every student who attends South Bend Schools. In addition, it will fund professional development for teachers and staff, and will also provide increased technology support for the 22-23 school year.
"Throughout the pandemic, we have put our current devices through a lot of use," Tienhaara said. "We had to take devices from our classroom mobile carts and do our best to provide adequate technology to our students, which worked very well for what we needed. This grant will ensure all our students have similar equipped computers, allowing us to standardize across grade levels. The extra technology support will be provided by the Educational Service District out of Olympia, and I know Mr. Ashley is excited to have the extra assistance."
The school district also took in a grant in the amount of $200,000 for campus stormwater upgrades. Tienhaara said the construction will begin later this spring.
"I think it's safe to say that everyone knows of our annual flooding issues on the campus and around South Bend," Tienhaara said. "We have been looking for grant funding to assist and were fortunate to find funding through an OSPI Urgent Repair grant. We received $200,000 to replace failing stormwater lines and add additional drain lines and catch basins.
"We are doing everything we can to improve our ability to handle stormwater," Tienhaara continued. "During the last flood we had in January, we discovered some main storm lines that had been damaged, and were not carrying water as designed. We also identified several areas that could use additional drainage and need more capacity to collect water. We are hopeful these upgrades will improve the flooding that gets into our vocational building each year, as well as approaches the Koplitz Field House."
South Bend also received a grant in the amount of $96,000 for ADA upgrades.
"We applied for an ADA grant to help us address some trouble spots around campus," Tienhaara said. "We still have some gravel parking lots, and this funding will help us asphalt some of those areas, bringing them up to ADA code. We are also going to be able to replace the asphalt in front of our elementary play shed, which will repair all of the uneven hard surface play areas, puddles, and cracks we currently have."
Dr. Tienhaara is appreciative of the grants that improve his school district.
"We continue to be fortunate to receive grant funding to help us make improvements to our campus," Tienhaara said. 'We do everything we can to be sensitive to our generous community, and we strive to find outside funding opportunities that ultimately allow us to keep our 4-year school levies relatively flat. These grants really help our community, and allow us greater ability to provide a great learning environment at South Bend."
Dr. Tienhaara is largely responsible for acquiring the grants.
"I wrote all of the grants, however it is a team effort," he said. "In grant writing, there is a lot of information that is needed for the various applications, and I depend on our staff to get me the needed information. Everything from student demographics, fiscal resources, project estimates and costs, etcetera. These grant applications would not have been possible without help from my office staff, high school office staff, our technology staff, and our facilities staff."