Leonardtown, MD — The St. Mary’s County Board of Education has approved security improvements for five elementary schools, including outside security cameras and classroom lock replacements. The project will cost $264,000, with monies coming from state bonds and awarded on a competitive basis.
The school board hopes to rollout the improvements to all the schools as more monies are available. The schools to be done during this round are Dynard, Green Holly, Greenview Knolls, Park Hall and Town Creek elementary schools. Additionally, the security measures are being installed at the Captain Walter Francis Duke Elementary School during construction and Spring Ridge Middle School during renovation.
The plan is to have mostly outside security cameras at the elementary schools to help identify suspicious activity outside and anyone attempting to break in. The upper classes will also have security cameras inside. The high schools already have them.
The classroom lock replacements will allow teachers to quickly lock the doors from inside during a lockdown situation or other emergency. Now they have to walk to the door to lock it.
The work was awarded to G Technologies Corporation under an “Indefinite Quantity Contract” awarded in April of 2013 to G Technologies. The cameras will cost $168,205.40 and the locks $97,794.60.
The item that was on the agenda after the security approvals at Wednesday’s school board meeting also was security related, but this time it was intended for the county as a whole and not just the schools. The school board gave unanimous approval to allow the county to construct an emergency radio tower in a wooded area behind Leonardtown H.S. and adjacent to Medley’s Neck Road.
The 300-foot tower would be more than 600-feet from the closest building, a trailer behind the tech center.
The new tower is part of a phased-in, 13-tower network. A year ago there were only four. Two have been added since then, at Bethune Education Center and in Valley Lee.
According to information supplied to the board, “This radio system has proven to be superior over the previous system and the school system has moved to the emergency radios as the primary resource for communication during an emergency situation. We have our own channel within the emergency management system.”
Construction of the access road for the new tower is expected to begin next spring, according to St. Mary’s County Director of Emergency Management and Information Technology Bob Kelly, with most of the tower construction work to be done next summer.