The Franklin County School district is asking for county help in building an escape road behind the Franklin County School in Eastpoint

The Franklin County School district is asking for county help in building an escape road behind the Franklin County School in Eastpoint but commissioners say they need more information before they can agree to the request.

School Superintendent Tracy Yoder said as a matter of student safety the school district needs to build a road that would provide secondary access and egress from the school.

Currently the only way in or out of the school campus is through the front entrance.

The road would be for emergency use to provide access if emergency vehicles need to access the school grounds or if students and staff need to be evacuated and the front entrance is inaccessible.

The road could also allow students to access the school if Highway 98 is washed out in a storm.

There are about a thousand people at the school on a regular school day.

The school is considering a limerock road that would lead from behind the football field along an existing dirt track to what many people call “old dump road.”

That would then access Highway 65.

Commissioners are amenable to providing whatever assistance they can but first need to know how much work there is to be done.

The county doesn't have bulldozers or log hauling trucks so they can't just go in and build a road.

And as yet they have not seen actual plan for the road so they do not know what exactly the proposed road will look like.

Commissioner Smokey Parrish said the school district should work on getting more than a limerock road that will probably need a lot of maintenance.

There is a time limit for the job.

The state money dedicated to the project has to be used by the end of June of it will go back to the state.

Commissioners asked that the county attorney and the school board attorney work together to move the process along as quickly as possible.

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