Boes retires at end of month as NV facilities manager, Thompson will take over

For the past 13 years, Jack Boes has had several school facilities, classrooms, mechanical systems, and more, to keep track of. At the end of this month, he’ll retire from Nodaway Valley Community Schools and Nick Thompson will take all that over.

Boes has learned the ins, outs, ups and downs of all three of NV’s learning centers, and three more in the CAM Community Schools, over recent years, as he is shared with 80% time spent at NV and 20% with CAM. His role at CAM is primarily an advisory one, however he does travel there often to resolve problems.

Boes said last spring that he is retiring. He has remained on staff through the summer to help Thompson, a 2004 Nodaway Valley graduate, get up to speed on what he needs to know.

Before coming to Nodaway Valley, Boes worked for the City of Fontanelle and in the plumbing and heating world, so coming to the school to oversee maintenance there seemed to be a good fit.

“The most rewarding part has been dealing with the people,” Boes said. “You try to keep things moving along, but what am I going to miss? The people.”

Boes said his job focuses on anything that is broken. If something breaks, staff will call him in and he’ll decide whether it’s a job he can tackle, or else he will have to call in the appropriate professionals to remedy it.

Boes manages Nodaway Valley’s four janitors. After working with someone who lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Boes was a pioneer for the district in finding environmentally friendly cleaning products to use that were far less harmful than the ones used before.

In addition to resolving problems on the day to day, a maintenance director also schedules and facilitates required annual inspections of systems such as the fire alarms, smoke detectors, sprinklers and boilers in each building.

A few memorable events stick out to Boes on his retirement, including an update to lighting in each of the buildings that made them more energy efficient, building the new elementary and learning all of the utilities involved there, and when the roof partially came off of the high school gym in a wind storm just before school started in 2019.

“That morning I came in, and I saw insulation on the south side of the building. At that point in time, I knew it was not a good thing,” Boes said.

While he attended school here and has been in the district’s buildings before, Thompson said it’s still going to be a learning curve, familiarizing himself with all of the nooks and crannies he’ll be dealing with daily. Boes will remain available even after he retires to help Thompson.

“I always had a knack for fixing things. It seemed like a good opportunity,” said Thompson, who added he likes that no day on the job is the same.

Boes can attest to that.

“You can come into work with a plan, but you always have in the back of your mind that certain jobs need done, but there’s always a [higher] priority that comes up that takes precedence,” he said.