Pioneer Middle School Maintenance
The Pioneer Middle School opened in 1973 and consists of over 153,000 square feet with roughly 90 classrooms, a state-of-the-art music suite, Large Group Instruction (LGI) room, gymnasium and swimming pool. The middle school had an addition to the E-wing in 1989 and has since had multiple renovations including the building-wide 2017 HVAC replacement and 2019 music suite renovation.
Tom Heim, Pioneer class of ’84, is the Head Custodian at the Middle School. Tom has been with the district since 1995. His staff consists of Assistant Head Custodian Elijah Hanson (’98, hired 2017), as well as second shift custodians Nate McCormick (’05, hired 2015), and Ciaran Greene (hired 2022). Tom oversees the daily operation of the middle school maintenance department. Tom and the other building custodians have experience in multiple trades and are responsible for maintaining the physical heating and cooling plant as well as electrical, plumbing, heating/ventilation/air conditioning (HVAC), carpentry, masonry, painting, and other building system repairs and maintenance. They also team up with the grounds crew for snow removal. The custodians are responsible for lawn care and landscaping at the middle school. In addition, they help to coordinate and manage all of the events hosted at the middle school, including athletic practices and contests, FFA and team banquets, STEAM night, meetings and training events in the LGI, and multiple community events.
The cleaners at the middle school are supervised by Brandi Prichard. Brandi was hired by Pioneer in 2021 to oversee the district cleaning operations. Brandi came to Pioneer after four years as the Contract Manager for the ABM cleaning company that used to be responsible for cleaning the middle school. The cleaners at the middle school are Dave Bressett (‘84) and Tao Bressette (hired 2022) along with Dawn Volk (hired 2022), Norea Platt (’20, hired 2022), and Alexander Sinclaire (hired 2023).
The middle school has recently had an extensive heating and cooling upgrade throughout the building. The heating and cooling plant consists of a heat pump system with five 750,000 BTU electric boilers for adding heat to the loop, along with two cooling towers used for heat rejection in the summer months. Six circulating pumps are used to circulate the glycol through the main heat pump loop to the individual heat pump units as well as the roof top units.
The heating, ventilation and air conditioning system is comprised of 55 heat pump units that provide heating and cooling to the classrooms, and 10 rooftop units that supply fresh air to standard classroom spaces. The classroom roof top units are a dedicated system used to provide 100 percent outside (fresh) ventilation air which is filtered and delivered to the classrooms. The larger spaces, such as the library, gymnasium, music rooms, shops, LGI room and cafeteria, have stand-alone roof top units, 27 in total, that provide 100 percent fresh air as well as heating and cooling to the space. The air from the building is exhausted out and not circulated back through the roof top units. Exhaust fans and relief openings are utilized throughout the building to discharge the ventilation air and prevent over pressurization of the space.
The middle school maintenance team takes a progressive approach to maintain and upgrade the building to provide a clean, healthy environment for students to continue to learn and grow.