By Sterling McGinn

The Tahquamenon Area Schools Board of Education has decided to liquidate one of their buildings—the old Beaulieu Furniture Store depot on the corner of East John Street and Parmalee.

The decision was made at the October 21 meeting of the board.

The interesting looking narrow building—built of corrugated steel along the industrial railroad spur, was donated to the school many years ago as a wood shop storage area. For many years, the building was the shipping destination for and storage place of furniture for Beaulieu Furniture Store.

“This was gifted to the district quite a few years ago and it had been used by the shop teacher at the time for supplies,” said Superintendent Stacy Price.

The building hasn’t been used by the shop class for years and was later rented to the retired shop teacher, who recently vacated the building.

“Knowing that there wasn’t a need for it, for the district it is in the best interest to sell it,” said Price.

The building was appraised at $7,000 and will likely go through a bid process with a minimum bid put in place.

During public comment, resident Neal Fryling addressed the board on the new Parent Teacher Organization, which officially formed with permission from Price.

“This is setup to be open to all community members, so it doesn’t have to strictly be a parent,” Fryling said. “It can be retired people, it can be non-parents, we are looking for anyone who wants to be involved and wants to be a positive influence in the school environment to join up with us.”

The organization is set up in a private Facebook group named Newberry School Parent Organization; people interested in access to the group page will have to request permission.

At the last meeting, the organization set up guidelines and a mission statement and meeting minutes will be uploaded to the Facebook page.

Meetings are set for the second Saturday of the month at 3 p.m. and the fourth Monday at 6 p.m. in the school cafeteria.

“Some of the things we are going to discuss at the next meeting will be some of the roles and responsibilities, formation identification for things like secretary, treasurer, Facebook moderator, and we are going to move into Robert’s Rules type of orientation so we can have a neat and organized way of addressing and staying on task and moving forward,” Fryling said.

He said they are working as fast as they can to get into an actual problem-solving workshop, where they can collect every problem they can find from a student’s perspective to teacher and community perspectives.

“We are going to throw them up on a board, sort and organize these items, and we are going to figure out which ones make the most sense to work on through a series of workshop events,” Fryling said.

In other action, the board convened in closed session for the purpose of periodic superintendent evaluation. Once reconvened in open session, no other information was given.