The Wright City R-II and Warren County R-III districts received school safety grant money from the state of Missouri.
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Both Warren County school districts were recently awarded six-figure grant funding from the State of Missouri.
The Warren County R-III School District was awarded $200,000 in grant funding through the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The Wright City R-II School District was awarded $150,000 in grant funding. Both school districts received grant funding after they were not awarded grant funding during the first round of school safety grant funding.
Warren County R-III School District Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith said their district’s improvements will include additional fencing at Daniel Boone and Warrior Ridge elementary schools to help secure playground areas. They will also use the funds to protect schools from potential active shooter situations.
“We’re going to be doing some more hardening of our schools and really trying to put some systems and things in place that will prevent active shooters from entering our building and in ways to protect children,” Klinginsmith said.
“Protecting from active shooters is our number one priority when we think about safety and accessing school grounds and accessing inside the school.”
The Wright City R-II School District plans to use the funds for three district improvements, according to Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jeremy Way. The district plans to use about $80,000 to secure the campuses of West Elementary School, the middle school and the district’s central office. They will use about $60,000 to install bulletproof film on a couple of their buildings. They will also use about $10,000 to secure district buildings with an outside AI phone, according to Way.
“These are the same things that we brought in round one,” Way said. “We didn’t get that grant. And so in round two, we brought these same things because these are things that we’ve identified through our safety committee or other means as ways we can improve our safety. And so this time it worked and we’re excited to get going on it.”
The two Warren County school districts were among 566 school districts, charter schools and non-public schools that received grant funds from the second round of funding for the School Safety Grant Program.
“I kind of felt like the state is just kind of working their way up through all the schools to just get the money out to them,” Klinginsmith said. “They just had to kind of go through their process until they got to where we qualified. And so we’re happy to qualify and get going right away on that.”
Klinginsmith added the district cannot use the grant funding for personnel. They could not use the grant funding to hire additional safety officers, he stressed.
The funding came available through House Bill No. 2, which appropriated $50 million in funding for a second round of school safety grants to support physical safety improvements in local education agencies and non-public schools across the state.
