Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series of stories from an interview with Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert.

A superintendent has to juggle a lot of plates in their role, with two of the biggest being building maintenance and school safety and security.
A school system never retires and its buildings are not the same as a person’s home.
“It’s a lot different than owning a house because we always want the facilities to be at the quality they were when we went through,” Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert, a 1998 Warsaw Community High School graduate, said.
The high school was practically brand new when he was a student.
“One of the things that I found out in the very first year of being in this job was, I talked about the high school needing some renovations and somebody said, ‘It’s a new high school.’ And I said, ‘The new high school now is almost 35 years old, and so it’s not the new high school anymore.’ And what was new for our generation isn’t new for the next generation,” Hoffert said. “So, our job isn’t to have the biggest and the brightest and the most elaborate, but what we want to do is we want to make sure that all of our kids have a quality education and quality facilties that are there.”
At any one time, with the size of school system that Warsaw is (eight elementaries, two middle schools, a high school, alternative school and career center), everything is on a rotation.
“When things get off a rotation, a good example is the first year that I was superintendent, when we had to run a referendum to fix up Lincoln Elementary School,” Hoffert said. “We had gotten to a place inside of our community where we hadn’t kept a keen eye on all of our buildings, so all of a sudden you’re at a place where you have seven elementary buildings that are taken care of, and you have one that’s falling apart. So you shifted the equality that students are receiving. So our goal is always make sure we don’t get into that deficit that is there, and we’re able to do things wisely.”
He said a perfect example of that is the high school project.
“We were able to do the renovations at the high school for a fraction of the cost of what a new high school would cost, and we were able to repurpose some areas. The 1990s, the media center and the library were the biggest, grandest things that you wanted. In 2024, now, you have different needs that are out there for students, so we were able to repurpose that into a safe and secure entryway to come into. We were able to repurpose it into office spaces, to work with our guidance office and our administration, and create really areas even with the learning staircases that we were able to put in there that can be doubled for academic spaces,” Hoffert said.
One of the things that can keep a school administrator up at night is the safety and security of the schools and the hundreds or even thousands of people within them.
“It’s changed. It’s another one of those expenses and resources that people don’t think about with schools,” Hoffert said.
Every WCS building now has a safe and secure entryway.
“We’ve changed every single entryway in all of our buildings, really over the last 10 to 12 years, inside any of our construction, because we realize that has to be a key,” he said.
When a parent drops off their children, Hoffert said they’re giving schools their greatest resource and the most prized possession that they have.
“So safety and security has to be THE top priority,” he said, and it’s also true for the schools’ staff members. “We want everyone to have an ease and a comfort level when they come to our schools. And I will tell you our schools are one of the safest places, bar none, inside of our community.”
A reason why is because WCS has an “excellent” relationship with the Warsaw and Winona Lake police departments and the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office, as well as other local authorities that care about the kids, Hoffert stated.
Years ago, WCS’ only school resource officer (SRO) for the entire school system was officer Dave Morales. Now, there are two SROs stationed just at the high school at all times, one at each of the two middle schools, one covering the county schools, one covering the Winona Lake area and WCS is working with the city to add another SRO for the elementary schools. Additionally, Hoffert said, WCS pays for rotations that take place throughout the day at the elementary schools, with extra officers sent in for lunch, arrival and dismissal times at the high school.
“We believe there’s just an ease that goes with that,” he said. “... I wouldn’t send my kids to school if they weren’t safe, and I wouldn’t send anyone else’s kids to school if they weren’t safe either.”
If there’s one thing Hoffert could get rid of to make schools safer is social media because there’s nothing positive that comes out of it.
“You look at the negative comments, you look at the threats, you look at just the use of it. And adolescent minds are developing, and sometimes that means people don’t make the wisest decisions, and a lot of those decisions aren’t taking place inside the school itself. They’re taking place at 2 a.m. on a cell phone. And that scares people. It scares parents, it scares communities,” Hoffert said.
Just within a few weeks ago, a number of schools throughout Indiana received threats or cancelled in-person classes because of threats over social media.
“I would guess - and, again, I don’t have a solid number - from talking with other superintendents, I would guess that at least 150 different school systems in Indiana dealt with some sort of threat, social media post, social media trend, a TikTok, whatever it was inside of that week, and I believe that’s fear that came out of some of the incidents that happened down in Georgia a few weeks earlier. But, again, when they start running rampant, most of the time they are not credible threats. Most of the time, they are not threats even toward our school, but it plays on people’s fears. And, once again, when you have somebody’s prized possession, it’s their kids. It’s their family. And nothing is more important than that,” Hoffert stated.
WCS constantly reviews and evaluates its safety and security.
“That’s one thing that people don’t understand, is that relationship with our local authorities. It means it’s happening at all times of the day and night. It’s happening on the weekends ... and this is probably one of the biggest changes from 10 years ago, we’re working in the middle of the night a lot of times to make sure that things are always safe for our kids. And, yes, it is not the superintendent making the decision. It is a team of people with our police force determining anytime whether something is safe. And, again, that goes with weather delays and cancellations, too. It’s really a collaborative viewpoint to ensure safety and ensure that we can provide a learning environment for our kids every single day,” Hoffert said.