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GENTRY — The School District has locked in plans for added safety.
Speaking during a specially called meeting of the Gentry School Board on June 26, the district’s facilities and transportation director said the district had received a $163,000 school safety grant from the state. Jason Barrett said the grant reimburses the district for expenditures to improve safety at school campuses. He said the district submitted projects to improve safety in the district in three tiers based on priorities.
Barrett asked the board to approve using the money for rekeying all the locks in the district and installing locks that are always locked when the door is closed. He said he hoped to have one master key that would fit all the locks so emergency personnel could access any classroom or office in the district. He said the hardware change would make all the doors Americans with Disabilities Act compliant. Currently, the intermediate school has the newer lock sets, but other campuses are not yet fully compliant.
Barrett said the district has more than 300 doors, not counting those at the intermediate school, and the cost to replace locks and hardware would be $154,000 with tax. He said the school maintenance staff would install them, beginning at the high school.
Because the district already has door hardware from Wesche Co., the board waived competitive bidding and approved the purchase from Wesche.
Also approved, using the balance of the grant funds, was a subscription to Raptor Technologies for software and services that will enable the district to screen and track all campus visitors. According to Barrett, the system allows the scanning of driver’s licenses and state IDs to run a background check, alerting school officials of sex offenders, those with arrest warrants or those involved in custody disputes. This cost was estimated at $8,000 for use at all four campuses.
In other business, the board:
Approved a 3% raise for Terri DePaola, the district superintendent.
Accepted the resignations of Tyler McReynolds as high school physical education teacher, Delanie Tipton as middle school physical education teacher, Diana Rhea as middle school math teacher and Julie Kelley as the district’s job coach.
Approved the hiring of Shawn Teters as the head softball coach and a middle school science teacher, Jacqueline Smith as a middle school math teacher, Brookley Trammell as a special education teacher at the middle and high schools, Monica Minor as the middle school principal, and Angela Kirk and Lisa Gage as custodians.
Approved the transfer of Mandy Shelly from teaching middle school social studies to being the middle school English language arts teacher.
Approved stipends for Jacqueline Smith to be the district secondary family and community engagement coordinator and Cali Lankford as the high school head volleyball coach.
