PRC schools grants total reach $2 million

The staff at the Pearl River County School District has been hard at work securing grants for the school system. During his Superintendents report, Alan Lumpkin praised the efforts of his staff and deferred to the Districts Business Administrator and Director of Operations, T.J. Burleson (pictured) to deliver the news on Thursday at the board of trustees meeting.

The District received a total of 4 grants, the first being the 2020 COPS Office School Violence Prevention Program Grant. This comes from the Justice Department and is designed to increase security in Schools through the use of cameras. Currently, PRC Schools has 175 cameras across all the campuses and the grant will allow the purchase of 60 additional cameras plus a lanyard based crisis alert system that educators will wear which has a “panic” button to alert resource officers of a problem. The Grant totals $500,000 and the District will add an additional $281,000.

The second grant covers the Distance Learning Act and it covers a large portion of the cost to supply every student with a Chromebook computer. 3,350 of the Chromebooks will be purchased with the grant at a cost of $1,047,103 from the Government with $288,000 from the District.

Technology was covered with the Mississippi Pandemic Response Broadband Availability Act Grant. This allows funding to enhance broadband speed and provide WiFi access to students without home internet. Students would be able to connect on school grounds in order to complete assignments. The School District didn’t have to match any funding with this grant and it totaled $207,095.

The last grant gives Federal Funding for the purchase of 50 interactive monitor panels plus cameras for teachers to use during virtual learning for off-campus students. The Fed’s kicked in $288,619 and PRC adds $50,950.

All in all a total of $2,042,890 in Federal grants was secured by the District with $620,000 coming out of the Schools systems budget.