Mason Hemingway, middle, a Vandevender Middle School eighth-grader last year and current PHS freshman, wrote Superintendent Christie Willis a letter in July asking the portrait of Charles Elliot Vandevender be transported to PHS after the school closes. The portrait will be displayed in the halls of the high school. Also pictured is former Vandevender Vice Principal, and current PHS Vice Principal, Cody Ratliff and PHS Principal Jason Potts. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

PARKERSBURG – Wood County Schools will now pay each municipality $50,000 to place a school resource officer in a school.

This is up from the $20,000 most were asking for last year and the $13,500 that was the standard a few years ago.

“School resource officers, they are the first line of defense when it comes to any emergency that happens in the school,” Jeremy Bell, Wood County Schools’ safety and security coordinator, said during the Board of Education’s regular meeting Tuesday. “It’s not a raise. It’s just we’re paying more to the people that hire them.”

Kaleb Lawrence, assistant superintendent of operations, told the board that the bids for the new Lincoln Elementary, set to be built on the site of the former Lincoln Elementary building, came in over what was expected.

“We are actively negotiating with the apparent low bidder for the Lincoln Elementary School project to get the costs down,” Lawrence told the board.

He said the bids for the new Erickson All-Sports Facility also came in higher than expected.

“We have cut out $720,000 for the stuff from baseball, softball,” Lawrence said. “They will have a nice, usable field, but it is not the turnkey one we all hoped it would be.”

The board also conducted four separate interviews for the Vienna Public Library Board and ultimately selected Katheryine Staats to take that seat for the next five years.

Read more from Tuesday’s meeting online and in the Thursday edition of the News and Sentinel.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com