NATCHEZ — Aside from the watchful eye of their teachers, students in the Natchez-Adams School District will be watched even more closely this coming year.

At Thursday’s meeting of the Natchez-Adams School Board a resolution was passed that will ultimately place security cameras in all of the district’s schools.

Natchez High School and Robert Lewis Middle School will each have 32 cameras installed. Central Alternative School will receive 16 cameras, the rest of the schools will have three cameras installed.

District Superintendent Anthony Morris said some of the schools, like Natchez High School, already have cameras but they are outdated.

“It’s going to give us an extra set of eyes,” he said.

Morris said the cameras should be able to help school security officers stop incidents before they start and identify students involved in occurrences.

“It works both ways,” he said. “And it’s a good way to collect evidence.”

While the new cameras will be an extra set of eyes for school officials, they will be a very high tech set of eyes.

The new system will allow school officials, with password clearance, to view the cameras via computer anywhere in the world.

Board member Kenneth Taylor said he felt the cameras would yield the most benefit to the district if they had a fulltime monitoring staff.

Morris said there is currently a plan in development to provide such monitoring.

The cameras should be installed before, or shortly after, the school year starts Morris said.

The new system will cost approximately $83,000.

Thursday’s meeting also marked the first time in recent history where the public was allowed to address the school board.

While no one signed up before the meeting to address the board, as mandated in the district’s protocol, one woman did address the board.

Gail Tew asked the board if Natchez High School had a Spanish I teacher on staff.

District human resources manager John Sullivan said there was currently a vacancy for that position and the district was still recruiting to fill the job.

Tew gave no further explanation to the board as to why she asked about the vacancy.

In other news, the board approved the district’s budget for the upcoming school year.

On July 3 the board hosted an open forum to discuss the approximately $40 million budget.

The budget will next be presented to the Adams County Board of Supervisors; they are not required to take any official action with the budget.