Center Grove aims to improve security

Center Grove schools want to increase live video monitoring of the schools, quicken response times to emergencies and improve mental health services.

Officials developed those goals after Safe Havens International conducted a safety audit of the district’s eight schools. Some administrators visited a school district in Littleton, Colorado, where they learned how the schools adjusted security measures following a shooting at the middle school. Center Grove also got parents involved, as 1,236 people participated in a survey about their top priorities for the school district, offering 934 ideas.

The process started in October, and during the next three to four months, the organization interviewed people in all the buildings, looking at security practices and procedures and how effective they were, said Bill Long, assistant superintendent of operations.

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The survey revealed people are concerned about the mental well-being of Center Grove students, supporting teachers who have students with mental health issues and making sure students with drug and alcohol problems are helped and not just punished by the schools. In terms of security, survey participants wanted faster communication between the schools and parents and a way to lock down hallways and doors during an emergency, easy-to-follow safety plans, a silent alarm system that notifies the police and fire department during a crisis and a school resource officer in every building.

The school is also exploring how to add mental health evaluations and counseling for students.

Center Grove hasn’t finalized any plans yet, and is still collecting responses from the community survey, which closed on Thursday. Long will lead the discussion about how to implement new security measures moving forward, Superintendent Richard Arkanoff said.

“Dr. Long and the rest of his team is working through the feedback. We’ll continue to determine our priorities moving forward,” Arkanoff said.

“While we have a lot of priorities from experts’ recommendations, we want to know what’s important to our community. We know all this is very expensive. Looking for ways to fund this will be the next step.”

Once administrators sort through what security measures they want to add to the school and how to fund them, they’ll have a better idea of when they’ll be implemented, Arkanoff said.

A referendum that would raise property taxes to fund those measures is a possibility, he said.

Franklin schools used a referendum to improve its mental health services and security. They plan on using money from property taxes to add a mental health coordinator and school-based therapists at every building, along with a fourth school resource officer.

Clark-Pleasant schools are using money from a referendum to form its own police department. The district’s first mental health coordinator started her position earlier this month and the middle and high school both plan on adding a school-based therapist in July, said Connie Poston, mental health coordinator.

Safe Haven noted that Center Grove schools were advanced in several areas when it came to security. The district has its own police department, a K9 unit that detects narcotics, guns and explosives, secure entrances in all school buildings, an anonymous reporting system for bullying and other safety issues and 13 certified school safety specialists, which exceeds the minimum of one required for each Indiana school district, Long said.

When administrators, including Arkanoff, Long, and Center Grove Police Chief Ray Jackson visited Littleton, however, they realized they were lacking in multiple areas, such as mental health support and live video monitoring.

“We want to increase the number of cameras and add video and audio analytics software,” Long said. “Littleton had a camera in the parking lot, it panned from left to right. You see a truck traveling very fast in a certain direction, the camera stops and follows the truck. It knew it wasn’t normal behavior. Their suggestion was we add more of those and adding live monitoring of classrooms.”

In the Littleton example, as the truck sped through the parking lot, it struck a light pole, immediately alerting first responders and serving as an example of how instant response can mean the difference between life and death, Arkanoff said.

The schools are working on completing a major step when it comes to first response. They aim to open an emergency operations center next to the high school in September of 2020. The response center will house not only the Center Grove Police Department, but members of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and members of the White River Township and Bargersville fire departments.

The sheriff’s office will use offices in the operations center to file reports and test breathalyzers as a substation for their headquarters in Franklin. The rest of the departments will have officers and firefighters stationed there around the clock, ready to respond to a nearby emergency in the community or the school district.

Safe Havens made several suggestions, such as improving emergency diagrams for evacuations and develop photo tours of each building, showing first responders where the water, gas and electricity are located and how to shut them off or turn them on, Long said.

The organization also suggested the district improve emergency preparedness by adding duress buttons in the schools, adding shades to classroom and office windows for school lockdowns, giving staff high visibility vests and training for traffic directing during evacuations and requiring staff to wear ID badges at all times so police can avoid mistaking them for aggressors in the event of a violent crime at the schools, according to school officials.

In terms of mental health, Save Havens recommended Center Grove schools improve their approaches to mental health and suicide and self-harm prevention.

“We want to have mental health services for all students, not just Medicaid recipients,” Long said. “We want to provide mental health resources and counselors, evaluations for troubled students and more mental health services for everyone.”

Addressing mental health in schools is sometimes challenging because it is not part of a teacher’s job requirements, Arkanoff said.

“We have to bring every kid in and love them,” Arkanoff said. “It can be a big challenge for kids with mental health issues. Mental health is not special ed.; it’s a medical issue. We’re not trained to deal with it in the profession. There’s not the expectation on teachers to be mental health experts, nor do we expect it from principals outside special ed. laws, but we will have to figure out how to work with it and deal with it.”

During the 2018-19 school year, Center Grove High School trained its staff in suicide prevention, and Community Health Network will train the remaining schools’ staff members during the upcoming school year because of a state mandate.

The training will instruct teachers what to look for in terms of depression and suicidal tendencies and what steps to take if they notice that, Arkanoff said.

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