A serious injury suffered by a child at a local school construction site has raised some troubling questions about the handling of safety inspections for a group of recent school projects.

In an attempt to save money on the projects, the Lawrence school district apparently chose to waive safety inspections of those sites.

At issue was about $280,000 in fees that the school district was going to owe for city inspections and permits for the projects funded by a $92.5 million bond issue. That seems like a relatively small amount for such a large amount of construction, but the district was trying to reduce its costs. The city hesitated to waive the fees because of the large amount of time and paperwork involved, so the district struck a deal with county officials to provide some inspections without a fee.

As part of the agreement, district officials relieved the county of responsibility for construction site safety and turned that duty over to the contractors themselves, which is sort of like leaving the proverbial fox to inspect the henhouse. Maybe the safety measures implemented by the contractors would meet city codes — or maybe not. That’s why inspections usually are required. The city’s planning director says the city would never agree to have a contractor responsible for safety without inspections.

It now appears that the contractor at New York School, and perhaps other school projects across the city, failed to meet the city standard for fencing around construction areas and perhaps other safety requirements — a situation that came to light when an 8-year-old boy suffered serious injuries at the New York School site.

Considering that the $280,000 was basically local taxpayer money being transferred from one public coffer to another, the city and school district should have tried harder to negotiate an acceptable inspection fee. Both bear responsibility for the resulting situation — the city for allowing the district to sidestep city inspection requirements and the school district for entering into questionable safety inspection agreements in an effort to reduce a fee that amounted to about three-tenths of 1 percent of the overall project.

The injury at New York School confirms the need for construction sites to meet city safety requirements. Taxpayers have a right to be concerned about whether the school district’s arrangement with contractors met those standards.