The Culver Community Schools Corporation plans to appeal the $2,100 false alarm penalty it got from the town. A new fire alarm system was installed at Culver Community Middle/High School this past summer, in part to eliminate the issue of false alarms. But since then, emergency responders have been called to the school seven times, due to false alarms.
Culver Schools Interim Superintendent Chuck Kitchell says issues are to be expected with the installation. “It’s a new system, and you put a new system in a building that size, you know there’s going to be hiccups and checks and balances that you’ve gotta work through,” he says. “It’s just unfortunate that the town decided to even go forward with the potential of charging the school corporation for those false alarms.”
Town officials say they warned the school corporation about the fees at the time of the first call. School administrators were also urged to demand that the installers fix the problem.
Kitchell says that many of the issues just required a few simple adjustments. “Three of them were because a basketball hit a pull station in the gym, just an accident that happens,” he says. “So we went out and purchased some cages to put around the pull stations, so we can avoid that from happening in the future.”
He notes that the school has now gone about a month without having a false alarm, and he’s confident the corporation can come to an agreement with the town. “I understand, that fire alarm goes off in town and you’ve got six or eight or ten volunteer firemen that stop what they’re doing and jump in their cars and get to the fire station and take off, and that’s troubling,” Kitchell says. “That’s an inconvenience to them, so I understand why they contemplate charging that. But I think we’re going to be able to work through that and not get that charge, at all.”
Kitchell says he plans to attend Tuesday’s town council meeting, to explain the situation and argue the school corporation’s case.
