Full-day K worth Jessamine taxpayers' dollars

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Ms. Dragomir, you can donate from your own personal funds to help the schools out. It is a free co...read more...

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So the state is forcing the county to build a justice center? When does that have to be built?...read more...

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Comment by tweldon: Thursday, September 2

For weeks I have grown so accustomed to writing acerbic retorts to Leland Conway’s columns with wh...read more...

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East Jessamine High School could be more secure soon thanks to a national grant of up to $110,000. The grant matches contributions from the school one-to-one, so $25,000 of the grant money is planned for the completion of a $50,000 security camera system at East High.

The Community Oriented Policing Services Office (COPS) grant was written by Maj. John Branscum of the Nicholasville Police Department; Patrice Jones, director of school, community and public relations; and Deputy Superintendent Owens Saylor.

"The lead on this originally came from the school resource officer, Billy King, who said, 'We really need to update this system,'" Superintendent Lu Young said. "He started talking to John (Branscum) and some others, and then when the COPS grant became available, we saw that as an avenue to be able to get an enhanced security system there."

Paul Hamann, the district's chief operations officer, said work on installing the system had already begun and the project "will move quickly." The system will include about 50 cameras.

Saylor said the district has wanted to bulk up the school's security system for a long time. Young said East High's current camera system is "archaic" and has been in place since 1997.

"Along with the school-resource-officer (SRO) program that we've added, we're doing everything that we can to improve security and safety in our schools," Young said. "It's kind of a different age these days from when we were all in school. These measures are very helpful. They help not only with keeping the kids safe but with keeping the property safe and they help with our ability to monitor parking lots at night and after school hours."

Branscum, Hamann and Saylor were all on hand on the afternoon of Nov. 25 at the Royse Administration Building when the grant was signed by Young, Nicholasville Mayor Russ Meyer and Nicholasville Police Chief Barry Waldrop.

"I don't think there's anything more important than the safety of our children in our schools," Meyer said. "That's what this whole SRO program has been about, and this is just a great addition to the safety precautions that we're taking."

Hamann said the district was looking for funds to do a similar project at East Jessamine Middle, and Young said one small project already completed there would qualify for the matching funds.

"The fact that the support comes from the federal government is so great," Young said. " ... Times are so tight right now in terms of school finance that being able to get this additional reward was really helpful. Frankly, we probably shouldn't have been able to do [the project] without the award."

School resource officers currently have the capability to watch live feeds of surveillance cameras at their schools. One of the goals of the school district and the police department is to make those feeds available to police officers on laptops in their cruisers.

"Once this is all up and running, the total package will allow officers live coverage of what's going on at the school," Branscum said. "So if they're responding to an emergency or anything at all — an alarm, break-in, anything at all, even nighttime — they can bring up that particular camera and see what's going on."

After the initial $25,000 is spent on the system at East High, the district will have up to $85,000 more matching funds left on the grant, which it has up to two years to use. But Hamann said the project at East High was meaningful by itself.

"This is significant," he said. "It could make a huge difference."

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