Town & school accord: Shared goals mark joint meeting

Article and Photo by Karen Carr Keefe

Senior Contributing Writer

Grand Island’s town and school boards held a joint forum Monday that participants said would be the envy of many other municipalities for its cooperative approach to progress on mutual goals.

The meeting took place in the high school Professional Development Room.

Topics included the school resource officer program; the bus arm camera law; a summer internship for high school students to work in town departments; shared services, such as the SRO program and shared information technology personnel; school safety; notary school; and upcoming town and school projects.

Panel members from town government were: Supervisor Peter Marston, Deputy Supervisor Thomas Digati and Town Clerk Pattie Frentzel.

Those from the Grand Island School District included Superintendent Dr. Brian Graham, District Clerk Jude Kuehne,­ School Board President Ashli Dreyer, Vice President Susan Marston and trustees Danielle Bruno, Roger Broeker, Jay Grover, Joy LaMarca and Sherry Steffans.

Some highlights of Monday’s meeting:

SRO program and school safety

Graham kicked off the meeting with a discussion of the SRO program, a collaboration between the town and the school, in which an officer from the Grand Island Police Department is assigned to the school district.

“I just want to thank the town and the School Board for working together to build in that type of security for our students here in Grand Island, and our faculty and staff – making this campus as safe as possible is always the highest priority,” he said.

Also on the issue of school safety, Graham said the district has contracted with ZeroEyes Inc., an artificial-intelligent, gun-detection software system to prevent shootings and gun-related violence. The ZeroEyes system analyzes streaming images from all the district’s security camera video feeds and alerts authorities within seconds if a firearm is detected.

Tests are done throughout the school year on multiple levels, Graham said.

He described a test conducted Monday at Kaegebein Elementary School that he said demonstrates the school district’s readiness to detect and deal with an armed intruder.

Conducting the safety exercise was an SRO “brandishing” a gun for demonstration purposes, along with district Chief Information Security and Data Protection Officer Josh Nichols.

Graham said, “During the test, the ZeroEyes company is alerted and a brandished gun is visible on our campus. … Today, they tested that system on the outside of the campus. They immediately picked up (images of) the brandished weapon – which was brandished by the school resource officer – that is verified by a human in Philadelphia – and then I get an immediate phone call, as well as text images are sent to my phone. They also contact emergency services, so that they have constant awareness of any possible threat or target on our campus.”

Graham outlined proactive measures the district employs to keep students safe. Among these, he cited, “mental health screenings and proactive programs to reinforce with our students that this is an environment where children can feel joy, be valued and be positively connected to the school district.”

Shared services between town and school

“We’re always looking for ways to partner where we can,” Marston said. He added there are grants to apply for that would help both the town and the school district.

The town and school work collaboratively to get the best possible price for diesel for their vehicles. “That fuel tank is held on our campus and your vehicles can come and get diesel from that system,” Graham told Marston.

He also noted that, facing a shortage of road salt during a snowy winter, Highway Superintendent Richard Crawford was instrumental in obtaining sufficient salt for both the town and schools. The district purchased what it needed from the town.

Marston said emergency planning is another important shared service between town and schools.

“The school has many facilities sprinkled throughout the town. It seems almost geographically correct,” he said. “If there is some sort of disaster, whether it be a snowstorm, flood, a massive power outage or anything like that, we work together with the school and our safety team to make sure that the schools are ready, if we need to engage some (schools) and make that a warming shelter for that area – or if that’s a place we can evacuate people to if there’s a flood.”

Marston said the town and school district are taking the next steps so the community is ready in the rare event that “something happens.”

Graham said the town Recreation Department’s partnership with the schools is beneficial for students and for the community.

“I know the Town Rec uses our facilities quite a bit for different programming. I think that’s a really great example of those shared services,” he said.

Other discussion points and concerns addressed include:

•A cooperative approach was agreed upon between the town and the school district to ensure maintenance and safety of the intersection near Kaegebein School during major snow events. The state Department of Transportation will implement new pedestrian safety measures, road markings and signage, and is reviewing signal options. This follows a state transportation study requested by the town. The intersection of Broadway and State Parkway was the site of an accident Sept. 11 that took the life of Grand Island Middle School student Leah Mayer.

“We sent letters of concern,” Marston said. “Obviously, families sent letters of concern. They (the state DOT) came back and said, ‘Here’s our first iteration.’ … ‘We’re going to start with this and go from there.’ And then they said, ‘We’re going to do this part first. We can do this right away, and we’re going to work on that this summer, and then we’re going to look at some other things.’

“Mr. Crawford and I gave them (DOT) a pretty substantial list of other things that we were concerned about, and they were taking that back to their team” to see if they could come up with other things.

•Marston said replacing all the town’s aging and degraded water meters with new smart water meter technology will result in a quarterly $17 water meter fee for town residents. The current meters were installed around 2005-07. The quarterly replacement fee took effect April 1. The actual meter replacement is planned for early 2026. However, the town is applying for grant funds, possibly as much as $2 million, which, if awarded, could substantially reduce taxpayers’ cost. The town will be bonding the expenses over a period of about 10 years, and officials said they want to create a mechanism to fund future meter replacement.

•Digati said one of the key town projects in development is the parks, recreation and senior services master plan. He said it will likely take 18 months to develop the plan. He said that, in the near future, ideas for the plan will be sought from the School Board, the public and other stakeholders.

•Marston said Aldi supermarket is still coming to Grand Island.

“They’re having some trouble securing the property,” he explained. “They have some legal issues they’re sorting out on the property, itself. Their site plan actually expires May 6, and they called us about renewing it so it doesn’t go away. So that’s good – that means they’re still committed. If they weren’t willing to do that, then I’d be concerned.”

Summing up the cooperation between the town and school boards, Marston said, “I think these meetings are great. I’ve been to many venues where supervisors and other elected officials talk about their relationship with their school board, and ours is so unique. Probably because our borders are so well-defined and we’re stuck with each other. That’s OK. They are all extremely jealous of the work that we’ve done with our school and the collaboration that we do.”