Local schools will receive several hundred of thousand dollars in state money this school year from the Indiana Secured School Safety Grants for Fiscal Year 2023.
The Franklin and Center Grove school districts got a maximum $100,000 from the matching grant. Clark-Pleasant received $60,000, Greenwood Community School Corporation schools received $52,318 and Indian Creek schools got $24,000, according to the grant award list.
The grant requires a 50/50 match, so districts will equally match the money provided by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, the grant’s sponsor.
Each county school district plans to spend the funds on its school resource officer programs. School resource officers split time between their local police department or sheriff’s department and the schools they have agreements with.
Schools also have agreements where they will chip in money to pay for some of the salaries of school resource officers, splitting those costs with their home departments. At Franklin schools, for example, two of the four school resources officer’s salaries are paid for with school district money, while the other two are paid for by the departments that employ them, said Nathan Wooten, a Franklin SRO who works for the Johnson County sheriff’s office.
His salary, along with the salary of school resource officer Doug Cox, former Johnson County sheriff, will be paid for by Franklin schools via the Secured School Safety Grant and its match.
Wooten spends his day greeting students as they get to school, making sure visitors are accompanied when they enter the school, checking exterior doors, monitoring lunchtime and seeing students off to the school buses when class is dismissed.
“I think it’s been very beneficial to the schools to have us here, students feel safer when we’re here,” Wooten said. “If we were on the street during the school day, we wouldn’t have a rapport with the students.”
Franklin schools will soon hire two more school resource officers, with an eventual goal of staffing eight, one for each school building, said Jeff Sewell, operations director at Franklin schools. The SRO program is about school safety, but has additional benefits, he said.
“It’s good to make sure we have the ability to respond in an emergency in the buildings whenever possible,” Sewell said. “The other thing I’d really like to emphasize is cultivating an understanding of law enforcement’s role in the community. They’re here to protect and serve the community, they’re not someone we need to fear. A lot of the emphasis is on the relationship aspect of the SRO and going into the classroom to give safety lessons.”
Center Grove and Clark-Pleasant school leaders will use the money to hire additional school resource officers to support their in-house school police departments, while administrators at Greenwood schools will use the money to help pay the salaries of current SROs, school officials said.
Center Grove and Clark-Pleasant spokespeople did not provide a specific number of officers the district is planning to hire by deadline Friday.
Indian Creek has one SRO, but the school district is on one campus, so district officials say the officer can easily go from one building to another. The SRO program provides a familiar face students can trust, said Andrea Perry, assistant superintendent.
“We really appreciate just having the physical presence of someone on campus every day in the buildings with students,” Perry said. “It’s a familiar face to students and staff and someone who works hand-in-hand with the administrative team as well.”
Edinburgh schools did not get a grant and does not have a school resource officer. The district’s SRO program began during the 2019-2020 school year and lasted only nine months. It was dissolved after the district’s former SRO accidentally discharged his weapon while off duty.
