Last week I had the opportunity to invest in the health and wellness of our students, staff, and guests of both F.E. Miley Elementary School and Big Sandy High School. The cost of this investment is completely paid for by a grant program made available through Montana’s Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and The Montana Portable Air Cleaner Program, which was funded through a $10 million dollar grant from the federal government to the State of Montana to improve indoor air quality and air circulation as a mitigation measure for COVID-19 and other harmful particles including cold and flu germs.

This grant includes the portable air scrubbing units that are sized to accommodate the various square footage of the rooms on both campuses that will provide four air exchanges per hour. It also includes three years of air filters for those units, as well as all shipping and handling costs. The order that we will be receiving shortly has a dollar value of $36,006.28, for the high school and $33,103.34 for the elementary school, which brings the total for both schools to $69,109.62. And as luck would have it I just had Mark, our friendly UPS driver, deliver the first of the units to the high school.

I share this with the public to inform you of the efforts of our school district to bring in additional grant funds that have a positive impact upon our schools. I will continue to look for and apply for grant funds that will help us and possibly shift the cost of improvements away from our general fund while still providing us the opportunity to make improvements that will add value to our school district.

As always, thank you to our community for your continued support. We have much to be thankful for and to be proud of and that speaks volumes about our students, their families, and the larger community of Big Sandy.