WCS Board Hears Update On School Security
February 20, 2018 at 6:15 p.m.
In light of last week’s Florida school shooting that left 17 dead, Warsaw Community Schools Chief Academic Officer David Robertson gave the school board an update on school safety and security Monday.
“Just want to share a little bit about some things we’re doing to take a look at safety and to address safety in a pro-active manner when it comes to safety planning and collaboration, but also share the belief that we have had holistic approach when it comes to school safety,” Robertson said.
Each school in the district has a site-based safety planning team that reviews plans annually and looks at everything from who to call for different events to protocols for responding to various events of any type.
The schools also are responsible for access control. “One of the biggest things you can do to make a school safer, to keep it secure, is to control access to the building,”?he said.
The safety planning teams are also responsible for drills, whether that’s weather, threat or earthquake drills. He said they’re an important piece of the effort to keep things safe.
WCS has a safety plan team for the whole district, made up school board members, administrative staff, buildings and grounds staff and local law enforcement, fire and EMS. The team meets monthly.
“One of the big things they’ve been responsible for over the last year and a half, this school year and last school year, was the implementation of ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate), which is our response protocol for an active threat,” Roberts said.
The team also has taken the lead on the schools’ Raptor integration. Raptor is the check-in system for visitors at each of the schools.
He said there’s a lot of collaboration on all the security and safety at WCS.
In the event of an emergency situation, each school has a trauma kit, he said. Every month, all administrators participate in safety scenario training that they take back to their staff. The state audits schools’ safety.
“Along with this, all of our administrative staff are certified as Indiana School Safety Specialists. Indiana is one of the only states in the country that offers a School Safety Specialist Academy. They open it up to any school leader in the state,” Robertson said, adding that WCS has made a commitment to send every single administrator to the academy. Most school corporations only send a couple to it. “That’s an ongoing certification which takes four days of class to get the initial certification, and two days each year to maintain the certification. That’s a piece where we feel like we’ve got a school safety specialist trained in every single school in our district.”
He emphasized the community collaborations that WCS has, which has grown over the last couple of years.
WCS works with the Kosciusko County Safety Team that meets quarterly. The team includes representatives of each school district, police department, EMS, fire department in the county along with the Kosciusko County Emergency Services Department and the prosecutor’s office. The broad-based team looks at countywide trends.
The Warsaw school system is represented on the city’s traffic commission, which meets at 1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month if there is business. It may address school issues such as traffic flow, how students get in and out of school and where school zones fit in.
WCS has a school resource officer program through the Warsaw Police Department. It has three SROs currently but will be back up to four for the next school year, Robertson said.
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“Probably one of the biggest pieces that I feel like has been fundamental for us here at Warsaw is our security services and the fact that we work with Warsaw Police Department and Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department and Winona Lake Police Department and Claypool Police Department. We have police presence in each of our buildings every single day through partnerships we have with each of those agencies. We just have really grown to love those partnerships.,” he said.
In WCS’s partnership with Warsaw Fire and EMS, he said they take a look at how WCS can continue to get better in making sure the health of students is taken care of in case of emergencies.
Over the last 12 months, Robertson said WCS has reached out to private schools Grace College, Sacred Heart, Lakeland Christian Academy and Warsaw Christian School to foster relationships and plan for the safety of all students in the Warsaw area.
From a financial standpoint, he said WCS annually applies and pursues for Homeland Security grants for safety planning. As part of that grant, every three years WCS identifies areas that it needs to grow and change in terms of safety and security.
“We’re actually in one of those years right now, so again, officers from Warsaw Police Department are conducting that audit. They will be on every site. This spring they will write a report to us,”?he said.
As a dad of three kids in the WCS system, he said he knows not everything can be prevented but “it does my heart a lot of good to know we are trying to do everything we can to keep our students safe,” and it couldn’t be done without the help of the local agencies.
Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert talked about the social emotional wellness of students and how that is a big piece of preventing a tragedy like what happened in Florida last week. It was identified as being important by WCS in fall 2016 during strategic planning.
“It was interesting because at our initial strategic planning, social emotional wellness of students was not something that was addressed. And we went five years through our strategic plan and our mission statement and that was not something that came up to the forefront. Then in fall 2016, we actually had students that stood up and said this is the issue and it’s going to be going forward inside of our schools; this is the issue that’s going forward in America and this is the one we have to take care of,” Hoffert recalled.
Coming out of the strategic planning session, it was decided that social emotional wellness of students had to be a priority.
At the same time, he said Time Magazine came out with an article labeled “Our Kids Are Not Alright,” which looked at some of the issues going on inside the heads of the current generation of students. Lilly Foundation, also about the same time, said social emotional wellness had to become a priority inside the schools.
“That really started the ball rolling,”?Hoffert said, in getting WCS to jump start looking at what needs to happen inside the schools.
Last year, Lilly awarded WCS a $700,000 grant and WCS was able to hire a social emotional wellness coordinator with part of that funding.
“We are spending the time, as we move forward, working with all of our groups, making sure they can identify a crisis, and then more than that, where do we take that crisis if we recognize a student that is going through some sort of emergency situation?” Hoffert said, adding that WCS is looking at incorporating that into its curriculum.
In light of last week’s Florida school shooting that left 17 dead, Warsaw Community Schools Chief Academic Officer David Robertson gave the school board an update on school safety and security Monday.
“Just want to share a little bit about some things we’re doing to take a look at safety and to address safety in a pro-active manner when it comes to safety planning and collaboration, but also share the belief that we have had holistic approach when it comes to school safety,” Robertson said.
Each school in the district has a site-based safety planning team that reviews plans annually and looks at everything from who to call for different events to protocols for responding to various events of any type.
The schools also are responsible for access control. “One of the biggest things you can do to make a school safer, to keep it secure, is to control access to the building,”?he said.
The safety planning teams are also responsible for drills, whether that’s weather, threat or earthquake drills. He said they’re an important piece of the effort to keep things safe.
WCS has a safety plan team for the whole district, made up school board members, administrative staff, buildings and grounds staff and local law enforcement, fire and EMS. The team meets monthly.
“One of the big things they’ve been responsible for over the last year and a half, this school year and last school year, was the implementation of ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate), which is our response protocol for an active threat,” Roberts said.
The team also has taken the lead on the schools’ Raptor integration. Raptor is the check-in system for visitors at each of the schools.
He said there’s a lot of collaboration on all the security and safety at WCS.
In the event of an emergency situation, each school has a trauma kit, he said. Every month, all administrators participate in safety scenario training that they take back to their staff. The state audits schools’ safety.
“Along with this, all of our administrative staff are certified as Indiana School Safety Specialists. Indiana is one of the only states in the country that offers a School Safety Specialist Academy. They open it up to any school leader in the state,” Robertson said, adding that WCS has made a commitment to send every single administrator to the academy. Most school corporations only send a couple to it. “That’s an ongoing certification which takes four days of class to get the initial certification, and two days each year to maintain the certification. That’s a piece where we feel like we’ve got a school safety specialist trained in every single school in our district.”
He emphasized the community collaborations that WCS has, which has grown over the last couple of years.
WCS works with the Kosciusko County Safety Team that meets quarterly. The team includes representatives of each school district, police department, EMS, fire department in the county along with the Kosciusko County Emergency Services Department and the prosecutor’s office. The broad-based team looks at countywide trends.
The Warsaw school system is represented on the city’s traffic commission, which meets at 1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month if there is business. It may address school issues such as traffic flow, how students get in and out of school and where school zones fit in.
WCS has a school resource officer program through the Warsaw Police Department. It has three SROs currently but will be back up to four for the next school year, Robertson said.
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“Probably one of the biggest pieces that I feel like has been fundamental for us here at Warsaw is our security services and the fact that we work with Warsaw Police Department and Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department and Winona Lake Police Department and Claypool Police Department. We have police presence in each of our buildings every single day through partnerships we have with each of those agencies. We just have really grown to love those partnerships.,” he said.
In WCS’s partnership with Warsaw Fire and EMS, he said they take a look at how WCS can continue to get better in making sure the health of students is taken care of in case of emergencies.
Over the last 12 months, Robertson said WCS has reached out to private schools Grace College, Sacred Heart, Lakeland Christian Academy and Warsaw Christian School to foster relationships and plan for the safety of all students in the Warsaw area.
From a financial standpoint, he said WCS annually applies and pursues for Homeland Security grants for safety planning. As part of that grant, every three years WCS identifies areas that it needs to grow and change in terms of safety and security.
“We’re actually in one of those years right now, so again, officers from Warsaw Police Department are conducting that audit. They will be on every site. This spring they will write a report to us,”?he said.
As a dad of three kids in the WCS system, he said he knows not everything can be prevented but “it does my heart a lot of good to know we are trying to do everything we can to keep our students safe,” and it couldn’t be done without the help of the local agencies.
Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert talked about the social emotional wellness of students and how that is a big piece of preventing a tragedy like what happened in Florida last week. It was identified as being important by WCS in fall 2016 during strategic planning.
“It was interesting because at our initial strategic planning, social emotional wellness of students was not something that was addressed. And we went five years through our strategic plan and our mission statement and that was not something that came up to the forefront. Then in fall 2016, we actually had students that stood up and said this is the issue and it’s going to be going forward inside of our schools; this is the issue that’s going forward in America and this is the one we have to take care of,” Hoffert recalled.
Coming out of the strategic planning session, it was decided that social emotional wellness of students had to be a priority.
At the same time, he said Time Magazine came out with an article labeled “Our Kids Are Not Alright,” which looked at some of the issues going on inside the heads of the current generation of students. Lilly Foundation, also about the same time, said social emotional wellness had to become a priority inside the schools.
“That really started the ball rolling,”?Hoffert said, in getting WCS to jump start looking at what needs to happen inside the schools.
Last year, Lilly awarded WCS a $700,000 grant and WCS was able to hire a social emotional wellness coordinator with part of that funding.
“We are spending the time, as we move forward, working with all of our groups, making sure they can identify a crisis, and then more than that, where do we take that crisis if we recognize a student that is going through some sort of emergency situation?” Hoffert said, adding that WCS is looking at incorporating that into its curriculum.