The Umoⁿhoⁿ Public School Board of Education would like to thank those of you that came out and voted for the bond to partially fund the UNPS Career Academy. This State-of-the-Art school addition will offer new and exciting opportunities to the students of Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation by offering six highly employable career paths including: Construction, Automotive, Culinary, Early Childhood, Nursing, and Entrepreneurial. In addition, the school plans to include a beautiful coffee shop and retail store that would be open to the public.

Originally, we indicated that construction would begin in the Spring of 2020 and be ready for students in the Fall of the 2021/2022 School Year. Nonetheless, we have run into some delays. Initially, construction was slowed by the COVID-19 Pandemic as the Tribe ordered that only essential workers were allowed in the village of Macy. Since then, we were very excited to learn that the Tribal Council approved outside contractors to begin/resume work on Tribal Projects including the Carl T. Curtis, Head Start, and the Commodity Building. However, they are refusing to give the school the green light to proceed with this project.

We support the need to keep our community safe and have established protocols for all outside contractors, vendors, and essential school employees. Not only do we intend to monitor and enforce these protocols, but we reserve the right to enhance them based on our own observations as well as community feedback. Unless the construction is permitted to begin, the project will be significantly delayed and the students of 2021/2022 will miss out on the opportunities offered by the Career Academy. We believe the expansion will not only benefit our students, but our community as a whole, and we would like to share some of the latest renderings with the public.