BOWLING GREEN, Mo. — On Monday, Bowling Green R-I Superintendent Dr. Matthew Frederickson announced the district has received funding to build a tornado safe room at Frankford Elementary.

Here is what Dr. Frederickson released…

BGR-1 Family-

We have exciting news to share! In 2018, we began the process of applying for upcoming available disaster funds in order to build a tornado safe room at Frankford Elementary. In the summer of 2019, our BOE approved a resolution to help pave the way so we can participate in a 2019 declaration and future declarations. In 2016, Pike County and the District had the opportunity to participate in a Hazard Mitigation program/training. Because no one participated, the district was ineligible for applying for federal funds made available through disaster declarations. However, we worked with the Pike County Commission to update the Hazard Mitigation plan to include the BGR-1 School District in September of 2019 and we sent our Notice of Interest (NOI) to the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) applying for funds to build a tornado safe room in Frankford. After achieving initial approval for consideration and a year of work satisfying federal requirements, we were notified last Thursday that we had received final approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for funding of the safe room at Frankford. We were told that The Bowling Green R-I School District Safe Room project has been awarded, and award documents will be prepared and sent to us as soon as workloads allow. We look forward to following the process and laying all of the ground work needed in order to build this addition and will communicate progress as information becomes available.

A safe room is a hardened structure specifically designed to meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) criteria and provide near-absolute protection in extreme weather events, including tornadoes and hurricanes.

For more information regarding this program visit:

https://www.fema.gov/emergency…/risk-management/safe-rooms

In other news, we have also learned that the County Commission has approved our application to use federal CARES ACT funds to bring high speed internet to the Frankford Community and Frankford Elementary School. We are excited to be the beneficiaries of these federal dollars to support our community!