Construction begins on new Sipayik school

After a two-year delay, a contract for the building of the new Sipayik Elementary School was finally signed on May 9, with construction equipment arriving at the site on May 20. A formal ground-breaking ceremony will be held on Friday, June 14, at the site of the former tribal office building where the new school will be located.
The $21.5 million contract with the Sheridan Construction Corporation of Fairfield calls for the building to be finished in less than a year and a half, by October 2020. Sheridan was one of three bidders for the project.
William "Eric" Altvater, facilities manager for Maine Indian Education, notes that, with the original round of bids last year, the lowest bid was $6.2 million more than the amount of funding available. Maine Indian Education then was able to work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to acquire the additional funding needed. A total of $18.5 million for the design and construction work for the new school had been included in a federal omnibus funding bill that was passed by Congress in early 2014.
Altvater says that the 47,875-square-foot, steel-framed building, which will replace the Beatrice Rafferty School that was built in 1970, will be energy efficient with high R-value roof and walls to meet LEED specifications, which is a green building rating system. Enrollment projections are for 150 to 160 students, and along with the K-8 classrooms the building will include a full-size pre-engineered metal-framed gym, dining area, a Native studies room, science lab, music and art rooms, library, computer and media labs and a bus garage. Full-size playgrounds will be next to the Kcipeskiyak ball field for use by the students.
Funding issues, along with BIA challenging the enrollment projections, have created delays in the project, with construction originally having been anticipated so that the building would have been ready in the fall of 2018. The tribal office building had been torn down in July 2016 to allow for the building of the school, and tribal offices were relocated to a number of buildings in the community. Altvater notes that some of the additional costs were caused by federal requirements for drainage to deal with water run-off.
The tribe will be leasing 20 acres to the Bureau of Indian Education, which will own the new school building. Plans call for the new tribal office to be located at the site of the Beatrice Rafferty School, once students and staff have moved to the new building.
"The community's excited," says Altvater of the new school. "They can't wait to get into it. It's been a long time coming." He also extends appreciation to the state's congressional delegation for their work behind the scenes to secure the funding.