August 28, 2013 at 5:01 p.m.
South Park building going to the birds?
South Park building going to the birds?
Not on her list of goals and priorities: Dealing with an animal invasion in a building she's charged with overseeing. A superintendent has to be ready for anything though and Jacobi was put to an unusual test earlier this month when she received a report that bats had taken up residence in the South Park building, the former home of the Northwoods Community Secondary School (NCSS).
The bat report turned out to be false but South Park does have some new residents - chimney swifts have been making their home in the chimney.
This most unique problem came to Jacobi's attention during the Aug. 19 Board of Education meeting. She received a call on her cellphone but, since she was an active participant in the meeting, decided to let it go to voicemail. After the meeting, she discovered that someone at the Oneida County Sheriff's Office wanted to talk to her.
"I checked my voicemail after the meeting and it was the sheriff's department and I'm thinking, 'Oh boy, this can't be good.' I called them back and ... they said that there was a problem at South Park as neighbors had complained that there were hundreds and hundreds of bats flying out of the chimney at dusk," Jacobi said. "As the new superintendent, this is a problem I certainly never anticipated."
From there, the wheels started to turn as Jacobi and her administrative team discussed how to take care of an apparent bat infestation.
First things first, they needed to find out exactly how many animals they were dealing with. Jacobi decided to handle the matter personally. She went to the building hoping to see what the neighbors saw.
"(Last) Tuesday night, I went out there and just sat in my car in the parking lot at dusk and watched and sure enough, there are things flying out of the chimney. I easily saw 100. So, I watched them for awhile and thought to myself, 'OK, what do we do now?'" she said.
As she continued her investigation, Jacobi said she realized that the unidentified flying objects were not bats.
"The more I watched them I figured out they weren't bats. I didn't know what they were, but I've seen bats fly and they just weren't flying the same way and the body shape was different," Jacobi said. "I went home and my husband and I pulled out all of our books and we started to try and figure out what they were and we figured out that they are chimney swifts."
After identifying the enemy, Jacobi and her team went to work on creating a plan to take back the building. As it turns out, there isn't much the district can do but wait for the birds to leave on their own.
"They're protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. There's nothing we can do," Jacobi said. "They're going to leave (to fly south for the winter) and then we'll follow up on the problem. Because they're migratory, they'll be gone in a month or sooner, depending on our weather. Because it's not a safety issue - they live in the chimney, they've built their nest in the chimney so they're not flying around the school - it's not an issue that we have to deal with now."
The district will, however, take steps to ensure the avian squatters do not return.
"There's nothing we need to do now. We can wait until they migrate and then we can deal with having the chimney cleaned and then capped so we can prevent it from reoccurring," Jacobi said. "We're not going to do anything to harm them now."
Meanwhile the district is still trying to find new human residents for the South Park building.
"South Park is on the market. It has been shown several times with no offers," Jacobi said.
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