By Krystal J. Carman
September 4, 2009 — Last school year, Foyil Schools was the target of four bomb threats — two in the same week in February.
The threats were found in boys bathrooms each time, meaning they came from within the buildings of the school.
Now Superintendent Pat Gougler intends on stopping that problem by applying for a $25,000 grant that will be used to purchase security cameras.
“We had four threats last year and they all came from within the buildings,” Gougler said. “With these cameras, we can stop it by seeing who’s doing it.”
With the approval of the Rogers County Commission, Foyil Schools will make application for a Rural Economic Plan Fund grant made available through Grand Gateway.
“This would give us 22 cameras to place in hallways and the cafeteria and other areas in our 18 buildings,” Gougler said. “We can’t put them in the bathroom, but we can put the cameras in the hallways outside the bathrooms to see who went in and what time.”
Anticipating more cuts to school funding, Gougler said she did not see $25,000 being available from the general fund for the purchase of the cameras.
“I don’t feel I can free up that money from our funds to purchase the security cameras and then not be able to keep our staff,” she said.
Also applying for REAP grants are Justus-Tiawah and Chelsea schools. The Chelsea School District would like to expand sidewalks and awnings already existing and Justus-Tiawah would like to fund a canopy project at the south campus.
Currently, Grand Gateway is in the process of reviewing and grading 87 applications from schools, water districts, cities, towns and counties in a seven-county area. The seven counties include Rogers, Craig, Nowata, Delaware, Mayes, Ottawa and Washington.
According to Jo Montana with Grand Gateway, once the applications are graded and chosen for funding, a committee will meet to discuss the grade and need for each application. Those chosen for funding will then be presented to the Grand Gateway Board of Directors in October for approval. Upon board approval, Montana said the approved applications will be forwarded to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce for its approval, which could come down by December.
Ordinarily, Grand Gateway provides approximately $150,000 per county through REAP grants. This year, however, the $1.5 million REAP grant budget was cut 7 percent “right off the bat” and then recently cut another 5 percent.
“We’ve received a 12 percent cut already this year,” Montana said. “And since we don’t know if we will receive more cuts, our plan is to fund 65 percent of the approved applications. Normally we would fund 100 percent of those approved.”
Those approved but not falling within the 65 percent of initial funding will be placed on a “B” list which will be considered for funding if no further budget cuts are made.
“That means we will have approximately $120,000 for each county initially, then we will see if there is any additional funding available,” Montana said.
