Indiana may have just awarded its largest round of Secured School Safety Grants, but Knox school officials are disappointed with their share of the funding this year. The Knox Community School Corporation was awarded less than $17,000, a significant drop from last year.
Director of Curriculum and Instruction Peggy Shidaker told the school board last week that the only item to receive funding was the school resource officer position. Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart said it’s the first time since he took over as superintendent that the corporation hasn’t gotten everything it asked for. “We asked for additional security cameras. We asked for additional bus radios. We’ve asked for paying for our entryway into our schools,” Reichhart explained. “And all those things got denied, and that’s quite surprising because that’s never happened before.”
Reichhart said that’s in spite of the fact that the state has put more money toward the grant program. “Now, it’s being split among more schools than ever before because they’ve opened it up to schools that, in the past, haven’t been included,” he added. “And what that has done – I contacted my friends and the state, and they said everybody got something but not everybody got everything.”
In other business last week, the Knox School Board accepted a $500 donation from First Presbyterian Church of Winamac for school bus safety.
