JSC set to review safety

In response to one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, Jay School Corporation is taking action.

Superintendent Jeremy Gulley on Sunday posted a nine-point plan for improving school safety along with a survey on the corporation’s website and Facebook page.

The plan and survey come on the heels of the most recent school shooting Wednesday in which 17 were killed by a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“It’s a national conversation that’s happening again,” said Gulley. “We have certainly made a lot of changes in schools since Columbine, but it’s now 2018 and we’ve had a couple high-profile school shootings in Kentucky and Florida and I think it’s time to re-engage on this really important subject.”

In 1999, two students killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher in a shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in what at the time was the deadliest high school shooting the country had ever experienced. This year’s shooting on Jan. 23 at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, resulted in two deaths and 18 more victims who were injured.

The Jay Schools safety survey — bit.ly/JSCsafety — asks for community input while also laying out nine steps the corporation plans to take within the next 90 days. Those are as follows:

•Convene a countywide school safety commission.

•Conduct a multi-agency active shooter exercise.

•Provide staff training about active shooters, bullying prevention and threat identification and reporting.

•Include law enforcement in current school remodeling plans.

•Review and refine school safety plans.

•Identify ways to improve school physical security.

•Confirm effective threat assessment among schools, law enforcement and mental health providers.

•Increase access to mental health and counseling services.

•Assess need, capacity and feasibility for increased armed security.

The survey, which focuses on input about ways that school safety can be improved, had received nearly 200 responses in the first 21 hours since going active. It will remain available through 8 a.m. Thursday.

“The level of interest and concern that we all share is evident in how much information and in such a short amount of time people were willing to provide to us,” said Gulley.

Those early responses, Gulley said, seemed to revolve around three themes — improving access to mental health services, bullying prevention and additional armed security at schools.

Working better with mental health services was already one of Gulley’s goals, which he said he hopes to accomplish by working more closely with Meridian Health Services and other providers. That would include keeping parents and students better informed on how to access help when needed and finding ways to reduce the cost barrier of such services.

“To me, it’s more connecting students and families to those resources,” said Gulley.

He added that he’d like to look at the possibility of adding of a “counselor-like position” to work with elementary school students. There are currently counselors on staff at the high school and middle schools, but not at the lower grade levels.

Gulley said he expects the school safety committee to be a wide-ranging group that will include those involved in law enforcement and juvenile justice, mental health care providers, educators, parents and students. Information about how to get involved will be provided later in the process.

He added that while the school corporation conducts “man-made disturbance” drills every year as required by state law, it seems like a good time to conduct a larger exercise that will involve students and all local emergency agencies. The last such drill was held at JCHS in October 2013.

Gulley noted that a lot has been done to improve safety in Jay School Corporation, including locking all doors and putting up security cameras. But, he said, there is more to be done, and the survey will help indicate the best paths forward.

“We need to know what parents and the community want to support as it relates to school safety,” said Gulley. “Anyone who opens up a Facebook page can see the debate that’s going on in the country. And I’m not so sure that we have the time to wait for a national consensus on this.

“So there are things we can do local that can address and improve security for our schools.”