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Chassell Schools bond issue projects expected to increase student safety

CHASSELL – Nearly all of the 14 items planned for school upgrades will center around student security and safety, Chassell Schools Superintendent Howard Parmentier said. The driveway to the school, the most expensive upgrade, will greatly increase the safety of students, as well as drivers dropping them off and picking them up.

The driveway, with a cost estimate of $325,000 is the largest expense of the bond issue and will expand the drive so that it can be made one-way. Currently parents dropping students off must turn the vehicle around to exit the property.

“We will also be adding some parking spots onto the far side, but it’s going to allow us to have drop-off area that is strictly one-way, which is going to be safer for our kids,” Parmentier said. “It should actually be easier getting in and getting out now. There’ll be no turnaround. They can come around, and they can drive right out.”

Upgrading the lighting in front of the school, which currently is inadequate, is also in the planning.

“It is a safety concern,” he said. “Lighting downstate in Flint is a little different than here.”

Parmentier was referring to the downstate district in which he previously worked.

“I look at it as it’s going to help with – they’re still going to be dropping students off in the morning, so one-way is going to help with the safety, the lighting is going to help with the safety.”

Parmentier knows from personal experience the outside lighting is inadequate.

“Obviously, this time of year I come to work in the dark, and I go home in the dark,” he said. “It will be a better way to possibly identify black ice, since I bounced my head off the sidewalk and I was out for over a month.”

Parmentier said he does not want a student suffer such an injury.

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