Franklin schools and city continue IT collaboration; city provides two SROs aided by state grant

Matt Sprout, executive director of technology for Franklin Community Schools, told the joint meeting the district and the city collaborate on IT purchasing and services, combining city and school users to obtain better vendor pricing and lower costs for taxpayers.

“We talk about 6,500 users. And all of a sudden, that puts the city in a different pricing market than they would if we went two separate ways,” Sprout said, explaining that the district’s roughly 6,000 users plus city users attract different vendor pricing and reduce overall staffing costs through shared positions.

The school board and district officials also described the School Resource Officer (SRO) partnership. The district’s administrators said the city provides two officers who are assigned daily to district buildings; the district offsets part of the cost using a state school security grant. A district official identified as Mr. Betts oversees the SRO program in coordination with Sheriff Cox and the district’s de facto chief for school security.

“We do have two officers from the city and we appreciate that partnership … We help pay for that through the school security safety grant that we apply for every year through the state and use that money to help offset those salaries,” a school official said.