Ensuring the safety of our schools through districtwide security and communications improvements regional school unit 26 (applicant) serves 800+ students from the town of orono and the surrounding…

Ensuring the safety of our schools through districtwide security and communications improvements regional school unit 26 (applicant) serves 800+ students from the town of orono and the surrounding areas, and consists of three educational facilities. With strong leadership, the efforts of faculty and staff, and support from state and local government, the school system is an integral part of the community. The core principles of RSU 26 are respect, caring, service, responsibility, honest, courage and fairness, and we work hard to infuse those core principles into our lessons because we believe students' success requires far more than content area readiness. In the event of a crisis, natural disaster or inclement weather situation, our school system has one goal -- to keep our students and staff safe. In order to ensure the continued safety and security of our students, faculty and staff, we are partnering with the town of orono police department, the town of orono fire department and the orono department of public safety to pursue federal funding through the svpp grant. After procuring funding, we will use evidence-based school safety intervention that supports community-oriented policing strategies to increase capacity to improve school safety while maintaining a positive climate. Purpose and primary activities: when determining which area of security we wanted to improve, we followed the guidelines set forth by the partner alliance for safer schools (pass) as recommended by the federal school safety clearinghouse. In following these guidelines we have identified training, communications, access control and surveillance as the primary priorities for improvement. The access control and surveillance solution will deploy surveillance in some schools that currently have no coverage and provide upgrades in others. The funding will allow for improved visibility, increased awareness and peace of mind. Additionally, funds will also go towards securing multiple doors across the district with upgraded access control equipment, including the addition of new card readers and lockdown buttons. These improvements will ensure the physical safety of our campuses by controlling and maintaining situational awareness of all doors, and by ensuring that our doors are equipped with new and improved hardware and functionality. In addition to these improvements, funding will also be utilized to modernize our paging and intercom systems at multiple schools, ensuring that we are able to communicate effectively in case of an emergency. Lastly, remaining funds will be used to employ a security consultant who will provide a full risk assessment and help US to create and implement training programs for district faculty and our law enforcement partners based on best practices as determined by the partner alliance for safer schools.