EVANSVILLE — Hold up a minute, said Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. board member Chris Kiefer.
The board was agreeing to pay $14,000 to Indianapolis-based Policy Analytics, LLC, which says it specializes in “economic research, public finance, and policy analysis” to help school leaders make good decisions.
Why? EVSC wanted Policy Analytics to conduct what its May 18 school board agenda called, “a comprehensive analysis of the district’s property tax base and long-term revenue outlook.” The study would include assessed valuation trends, tax base forecasts, circuit breaker modeling and projections of net property tax revenues.
The school board also agreed during a May 18 meeting to engage architecture, engineering and interior design company Gilbraltar Design to do an assessment and feasibility study to evaluate building conditions, infrastructure needs and long-term capital priorities. The price tag: $175,000.
All that’s on top of the $215,750 that the school board agreed in December to pay Cleveland, Ohio-based National School Safety and Security Services to conduct what EVSC calls a top-to-bottom assessment of safety measures already in place in its 40 schools.
The latter decision EVSC made in the wake of threat incidents that occurred early in the school year.
With total spending on the three studies amounting to $404,750, Kiefer wondered whether the school board could “wrap this all together with our safety and security study.”
“Would it make sense to wait until we get all three of those to make really an informed decision?” he asked.
Superintendent Darla Hoover said Kiefer is right.
“What we’re talking about, really with all three, is having this long-range plan, having the information that we need, so that we know — capital projects, infrastructure — what are we looking at in the short and long term?” Hoover said.
Then Hoover touched on the safety and security study, which has become a flashpoint for parents and others who think EVSC should be spending money instead on weapons detection systems, as some area school districts say they have done successfully.
“And with the safety study, we know there’s going to be some capital projects that come about based on that, and then the bottom line is, you have to know how much money you have coming in so you can create a responsible plan that we can afford,” the superintendent said.
It would be a surprise if whatever reforms EVSC’s consultant ultimately recommends include weapons detection technology.
National School Safety and Security Services’ president, Kenneth Trump, has made several arguments mitigating against the technology, telling the school board in February that it isn’t guaranteed to work and can cause false alarms for items that aren’t weapons.
Warrick County School Corp., which spent nearly $300,000 on weapons detection systems following a string of threat incidents of its own, recognizes that Chrome laptops, three-ring binders with metal, metal glasses cases and band instruments can set its machines off — so students hand those around to be checked and returned.
EVSC nevertheless apparently is expecting to incur serious costs putting at least some of the recommendations of Trump’s group into action after it issues its report this summer.
During its May 4 meeting, the school board agreed to issue general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $15 million.
“These bond proceeds are designated for safety and security upgrades across the district,” Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Carl Underwood told the school board that night.
Issuance of the bonds themselves is not necessarily unusual. Underwood noted afterward that EVSC issues general obligation bonds for facility maintenance every year. In March 2025, the school board agreed to the issuance of not more than $6.6 million “for the purpose of procuring funds to be applied on the cost of the renovation of and improvements to facilities throughout the School Corporation, including site improvements and the purchase of equipment and technology.”
Last year’s bond is not quite paid off, Underwood told the Courier & Press last week, but EVSC generally has them paid off in three or four years.
“We have other ones falling off every year,” Underwood said.
This year, Underwood said, “We’ve also added safety and security in there.”
But how much of the bond amount not to exceed $15 million is in anticipation of expenses related to school safety and security upgrades?
The final bond resolution — if not Underwood’s description of it to the school board — states the money will be used to pay, “the total cost of the renovation of and improvements to facilities throughout the School Corporation, including safety and security improvements, site and athletic improvements, and the purchase of buses, equipment, and technology.”
Underwood and EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg said they won’t know how much will go to safety and security upgrades to schools until the school board assesses whatever report is produced by National School Safety and Security Services.
In that case, the Courier & Press asked, can Woebkenberg and Underwood estimate how much of the $15 million is earmarked for expenses not related to safety and security upgrades?
“Really, we’ll wait and see what the safety and security report looks like,” Woebkenberg replied.
How then did EVSC arrive at the $15 million figure?
“That was a conservative amount that we worked with our financial advisors out of Indianapolis to ensure that we did not negatively impact our local taxpayers,” Underwood said.
The school board will meet again on June 8 and on June 22.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: EVSC braces for cost of school safety upgrades
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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