Security the main focus of Clark-Pleasant referendum

<p>Clark-Pleasant school officials don’t want to wait for a person to come into the school with a weapon or some other disaster at one of the district’s nine buildings to take steps to improve safety and security.</p><p>The question now is whether residents and business owners in the school district are willing to pay more in property taxes to help fund new programs that school officials and experts say would make the community’s schools safer.</p><p>If voters say yes to the referendum question, the plan would increase property taxes in the district by 10 cents for every $100 of assessed value for eight years. For the owner of a $100,000 home, the increase would cost about $33 more in property taxes each year.</p><p>Altogether, it would raise about $12 million over eight years for the school district to either build its own police force or split the cost of full-time officers with local police departments, hire mental health counselors and implement a new and improved security monitoring system.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>The biggest chunk of that money would go toward school resource officers, which are police officers with special training to work in the schools. It isn’t clear yet whether they would be employed by the three area police departments – Greenwood, Whiteland and New Whiteland – or by the school district. Center Grove is the only school district in the county with its own police department; the other public schools have officers in the schools through arrangements with area police departments.</p><p>School resource officers are armed police officers who go through a 40-hour National Association of School Resource Officers training, which includes a variety of classes such as the teen brain, social media and human trafficking.</p><p>Officials have discussed the idea of building their own police force, similar to what Center Grove has. But they aren’t sure that’s financially feasible, even if the referendum passes, Superintendent Patrick Spray said.</p><p>The referendum is expected to bring in about $1.5 million a year. About $900,000 of that would be spent on police officers, with most of that money going towards personnel and equipment, Spray said.</p><p>Ideally, one full-time police officer would be in every school building. Even if they were employed by a local police department, their sole responsibility would be the school they’re assigned, he said.</p><p>In the first year, the district plans to hire a safety and security director and two full-time school resource officers, Spray said. Moving forward, they would hire additional officers each year depending on the need and what kind of help they can continue to get from local police departments.</p><p>&quot;We’re really concentrating on having people who are on a full-time basis thinking about what is happening in our schools,&quot; he said.</p><p>Right now, several part-time, off-duty officers share the responsibility of patrolling in the schools. But the schedule isn’t consistent and the three officers on duty at any given time can’t possibly cover the 1.3 million square feet of space under roof at the schools.</p><p>It’s not enough, Spray said.</p><p>&quot;We need to have more opportunities for safety at each of our buildings,&quot; he said.</p><p>Currently, school resource officers spend most of their shifts at the middle and high schools because that’s where the need usually is. The most common offenses are minor batteries — or school fights — and harassment, said Chris Speer, a school resource officer and patrolman with the New Whiteland Police Department.</p><p>Most incidents are handled within the schools. But anything that requires investigation must go to the local police departments.</p><p>“We still report to our chiefs and they delegate accordingly,” Speer said.</p><p>Every school day, one officer is assigned to the high school and one to the middle school. Those two officers are also responsible for anything that might come up at the elementary schools during their shift.</p><p>“When we are at the schools, we are inside the schools all day,” he said.</p><p>“Our biggest role here is not just to handle incidents that the principals might need us for, but rather building bridges with school staff and mainly the students.”</p><p>The nine officers who share the duties spend, on average, 16 hours a week in the schools in addition to their full-time duties with local police departments.</p><p>“Today I’m on call as a New Whiteland patrolmen. Come Monday, I’ll be at the middle school all day as a SRO,” Speer said on Friday.</p><p>They walk the halls, check doors, make sure no one is on campus who shouldn’t be — all of the things your typical security guard would do. But they also go into the classrooms and interact with teachers and students; they eat lunch with them; they mentor them.</p><p>Those steps are just as important, Speer said.</p><p>“They don’t just see us as somebody who shows up to arrest somebody, they see us as somebody that they can reach out to to help them with all different sorts of problems,” he said.</p><p>As Spray has talked with local police chiefs, he’s realizing their departments are stretched thin, too. They don’t necessarily have the resources to cover even part of the costs for full-time officers in the schools, he said.</p><p>It is recommended by the national association that every school have at least one full-time officer; it is recommended that school districts have one for every 1,000 students. So by national standards, Clark-Pleasant should have at least six full-time officers.</p><p>Four school officials traveled to Littleton, Colorado two weeks ago to examine the kind of program they hope the referendum will allow them to build. Littleton Public Schools has been ranked one of the best districts in the nation for school security and has its own police force.</p><p>It is three times the size of Clark-Pleasant, with more than 15,000 students spread across 27 school sites.</p><p>Littleton’s Director of Security, Guy Grace, has been with the district for three decades, and he’s seen an evolution that’s necessary in all schools around the nation, he said.</p><p>Before Columbine in 1999, his job looked a lot different. His focus was on routine maintenance and making sure the buildings were safe and secure. But after Columbine, the district named him director of security and started changing the way they looked at safety and security.</p><p>&quot;The program was revamped to emphasize integrated security and access control, and we started to focus on empowering more people to be involved in our safety programs,&quot; Grace said.</p><p>“We just want people to be more aware. Our goal is to get to every audience out there and train them and empower them to deal with all different types of emergencies.&quot;</p><p>Now, they have 11 full-time school resource officers and 14 unarmed security officers.</p><p>Having that level of security presence inside their schools has helped lessen incidents that could have ended very badly, such as a school shooting in 2013.</p><p>&quot;Our procedures mitigated a lot of damage and loss of life,&quot; Grace said.</p><p>Still, they’d like to have more, he said.</p><p>An additional 300 staff members, including secretaries and administrators, are trained to monitor security cameras that are scattered throughout the buildings and campuses. Someone is monitoring the cameras at all hours of the day and night, Grace said.</p><p>&quot;They’re captain of the cameras, so we don’t have to fund those extra people,&quot; he said.</p><p>Clark-Pleasant would like to have a more sophisticated monitoring program as well, Spray said. If the referendum passes, the district would put about $200,000 to $300,000 a year towards a high-tech security system that would be monitored around the clock at a centralized location.</p><p>&quot;We’re not asking for anything different than what warehouses, hospitals and churches have,&quot; Spray said.</p><p>Littleton’s main focus in terms of safety and security is mental health, which is another element Clark-Pleasant would focus on if the referendum passes.</p><p>In 2013, Littleton launched an anonymous tip line for people to report students who may be making threats or, in most cases, are suicidal. The security team receives about 600 tips a year, and they partner with the district’s Social, Emotional and Behavioral Services Department to make sure those kids get the help they need.</p><p>&quot;The ability it provides our community in dealing with mental health calls that come in after hours is phenomenal. Often what we see is on a Friday or Saturday or in the middle of the night is students sharing on social media that he or she is suicidal. Suicide is just as bad as an active shooter environment,&quot; Grace said.</p><p>&quot;We all deal with a lot of the same hazards. Community funding is quite the challenge for a school district to obtain. But we’re all publicly funded, so we need more of that support.&quot;</p><p>A political action committee with about a dozen members formed in support of the Clark-Pleasant referendum. No groups have formed against it.</p><p>The goal of the group, dubbed the Clark-Pleasant Committee for Safe and Nurturing Schools, is to make everyone in the community aware of the referendum and help them understand how those extra tax dollars would be spent.</p><p>The group organized three community forums, where they’ve discussed the referendum in detail with people in the community, answered questions and addressed concerns.</p>[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="The question" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>For the eight (8) calendar years immediately following the holding of the referendum, shall the Clark-Pleasant Community School Corporation impose a property tax rate that does not exceed ten cents ($.10) on each one hundred dollars ($100) of assessed valuation and that is in addition to all other property taxes imposed by the school corporation for the purpose of funding school safety initiatives, programs and student mental health support?</p>[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title="At a glance" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>If Clark-Pleasant residents vote yes to a question on the ballot on Nov. 6, property taxes in the district will increase by 10 cents for every $100 of assessed value for eight years. It would raise about $1.5 million a year for a total of $12 million.</p><p>Here is a look at how much the district plans to spend on each program in the first year if the referendum is approved:</p><p><strong>Security:</strong> the district would hire a director of safety and security and several full-time school resource officers who would work solely in the schools; $900,000</p><p><strong>Mental health:</strong> the district would hire at least two full-time clinical licensed therapists or crisis counselors who would focus on social, emotional and behavioral issues; $300,000 to $400,000</p><p><strong>Monitoring:</strong> the district would purchase a high-tech security system that would be monitored around the clock at a centralized location; $200,000 to $300,000</p>[sc:pullout-text-end]