Pictured is Bruce, a therapy dog, approved for use at Jamestown High School. The dog met with members of the Jamestown Public Schools Board this week. P-J photo by Katrina Fuller

Looking dapper in his bow tie, Bruce the therapy dog formally met with members of the Jamestown Public Schools Board this week.

The meet-and-greet appears to have went well.

Use of Bruce as a therapy dog was approved to help out and provide support to students at the high school.

“I know other schools have had therapy dogs, and I know Bush School had one,” said board Vice President Patrick Slagle. “My son goes to Bush School, and my daughter, too, and seeing how it affects the kids and the interactions these dogs and service animals had with these students — it’s wonderful. It’s a great thing; thank you for being willing to provide this.”

Sue Mead, owner of Bruce and school psychologist, said the district will incur no cost for utilizing the dog. Mead said Bruce has been through rigorous training for two years to become a therapy dog, which she happily financed.

Bruce has taken the Canine Good Citizen test and has been certified through Therapy Dogs United out of Erie, Pa.

Mead said Bruce will gradually build up his presence in the school, starting out at a few hours at a time. The current plan is to have him work with students who need support and comfort throughout the day, as well as students with special needs.

Board President Paul Abbott also thanked Bruce’s owner, Sue Mead. He added that sometimes there are “particular climates” at board meetings and wondered allowed if Bruce might be able to attend those meetings, drawing a chuckle from the crowd.

After the resolution was introduced, Abbott asked if anyone was opposed.

“Nobody votes against dogs,” he said.

In other news, representatives of Northside Midget Football spoke to members of the school board regarding the state of the fields at Persell and Washington middle schools. Northside coach Brian Bigelow, fundraiser Missy Paterniti and City Councilmember Randy Daversa asked the board to consider improvements that could be made to each field, either through fundraisers, efforts on the part of the team, help from the city’s ARPA funding, or through improvements the school could fund.

“We touch hundreds of lives a year,” Bigelow said. “We all feed into that long storied tradition of Jamestown Red Raider football. I wanted to bring to the board’s attention and maybe some improvements that we could make at some of the school’s facilities by whatever means.”

Paterniti distributed some photographs recently taken of Persell’s field after a rainstorm.

“Football is a good sport where you want to get dirty and you want to get grungy, but this was dangerous,” Paterniti said.

After the meeting, Superintendent Kevin Whitaker noted that using city funding to improve the school district’s football fields could be tricky.

“Even though we’re in the city, it’s not technically city property,” Whitaker said. “There are different rules and regulations from the state and from the state Education Department that dictate how and who and the process for addressing these kinds of things. Usually, when it comes to schools, there is a lot of red tape and bureaucracy and layers of state education that you have to get approvals through. We’re going to have to figure out how to navigate that in order to see what we can do to help our community.”

Whitaker also discussed the new $5 million capital reserve fund the board approved. He said the district doesn’t have a specific goal in mind as of yet, but the district wanted to make sure the fund was in place to make sure that capital expenditures didn’t impact the tax rate for taxpayers going forward.

“While we have some money that we can put toward, if you will, a savings account toward capital expenses that are definitely going to come up, whether it is roofing or HVAC … we want to be able to address those things without having to go to the taxpayers and increase their taxes,” he said.