VIENNA — The Maries R-1 School District received good news last Friday when it was informed it was one of 160 schools nationally and one of only four Missouri schools to receive the COPS grant to help pay for safety and security improvements at the school in Vienna.

Superintendent Mark Parker said the district applied for the national school violence prevention program grant in April. Parker applied for the grant in order to use it for the security and safety improvements being made at the school campus. He wanted to try to get the grant to use it in conjunction with the bond issue money approved by voters in June.

With the grant money, Maries R-1’s 25 percent match will go from $118,091 to $29,522, saving the school district $88,568 on already planned projects.

The security and safety projects the grant will help pay for include putting in man traps at the school entryways, replacing exterior doors at the elementary school and middle school entrances and installing a Raptor System — which uses a school visitor’s valid ID to do a background check to ensure they are not on a sexual predator list. These efforts and improvements keep predators out of the buildings.

The money also will be used to secure additional security cameras, key lock/fob electronic entrances at the doors and lights for the parking lot.

Parker said being one of the recipients of this national COPS grant was confirmed on Friday and he was quite pleased. All of these planned improvements were in the bond issue.

There were four Missouri school districts to receive the grant—Maries R-1 in Vienna, Bayless Consolidated School District, Schuyler County R-1 and Plato School District.