Focused on safety

For five months now, school safety has been at the top of Jeremy Gulley’s agenda.

That pattern continued Monday.

The Jay School Corporation superintendent told the school board Monday about Sandy Hook Promise training that was held earlier in the day and used that as a springboard to discuss other safety measures that have been implemented or are being considered.

The board also approved keeping Anthem and Dental Dental as insurance providers for the 2018-19 school year.

Earlier Monday, staff from Jay and Blackford schools underwent training through the Sandy Hook Promise program. Named for the elementary school where a 2012 shooting left 26 dead, the program offers a variety of resources for students and school staff in an effort to prevent gun violence.

Following the training, each Jay County school has a threat assessment team in place that includes an administrator, a teacher and a mental health services provider.

Sandy Hook Promise (sandyhookpromise.org) also features an application for anonymous reporting of potential threats. Gulley, noting that federal grant funding will pay for the program, said he expects the app to be implemented in Jay County this fall.

“I’m real pleased with this,” he said. “It’s an important piece of our prevention strategy.”

Gulley addressed several other school safety initiatives, including his desire to use $100,000 in economic development funds pledged by Jay County Commissioners to implement the best practices outlined by Indiana Sheriff’s Association. Those are as follows:

•Providing real-time notification to law enforcement of a shooting or the spotting of a shooter.

•Protection for the students, teachers and staff inside the school through a hardened door system.

•The ability to identify, locate and track a shooter inside a building.

•The ability to launch countermeasures against the shooter while officers are en route.

•Access to the status of all classrooms inside the school.

•Full command and control of an incident by providing 100 percent actionable intelligence of the situation.

Gulley said such a system could involve “panic fobs” in each classroom as well as cameras that would allow law enforcement to have live access in the case of a school attack.

“I believe there are solution providers now that can help us install those in our school,” said Gulley. “You're essentially shortening our response time, which is a critical gap.”

Gulley reported that the process of giving school employees access to firearms will begin this week. Volunteers will first be interviewed by the superintendent, Sheriff Dwane Ford and a retired law enforcement office. They will then go through a psychological screening in August, with training to begin in September and a board decision to follow.

Under a policy approved in May, staff members who volunteer, are screened psychologically, undergo at least 26 hours of training and are approved by the board would be able to have access to a firearm that will be kept in a safe with biometric controls on school grounds.

Gulley also asked the board to think about a program Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb announced last week that would provide free metal detectors to schools — one for every 250 students.

He said he doesn’t see them being used at every school every day, but that they could be useful in times when there is a school threat as Jay County High School experienced earlier this year. He encouraged board and public input on the issue.

Gulley noted that a physical security assessment has been completed by Viridian Architectural Design of Fort Wayne. The firm looked at all corporation buildings and assessed procedures, site control, windows, doors, secure locations, communications, electrical service, exterior lighting, fire alarms and cameras, and made recommendations for improvements.

The assessment will be used as the corporation looks at continued improvements in the future.

Board members Phil Ford, Beth Krieg, Kristi Betts, Ron Laux, Krista Muhlenkamp, Cory Gundrum and Mike Shannon also voted to keep Anthem as its health insurance provider for both medical and vision and Dental Dental for dental coverage.

There was a brief discussion about the recommendation from the insurance committee, which included Laux and Muhlenkamp. They indicated that a survey showed about 55 percent of employees favored staying with Anthem rather than switching to IU Health. They said while IU Health had some attractive features, including a free clinic and potentially lower costs, there were concerns about problems with out-of-network providers.

The new contract with Anthem will result in increases of between $181 and $237 annually for individual plans and $415 and $541 annually for family plans.

In other business, the board:

•Congratulated the Jay County High School Marching Patriots on their win Saturday at the Archway Classic at Centerville.

•Heard from Gulley that school renovation projects are on schedule at East and General Shanks elementary schools. Both are expected to be substantially complete in time for school to begin Aug. 10.

•Heard the financial report from business manager Brad DeRome, who said the corporation is on track to have a positive cash flow of about $594,000 in the general fund in 2018. That would result in a general fund balance of about $2 million at the close of 2018, up from about $1.4 million at the close of 2017.

•Set Chromebook replacement fees for devices lost or damaged at $250 for kindergarten through seventh grade, $165 for eighth grade, $250 for freshmen and $80 for sophomores through seniors. There are also fees of $50 for broken screens, $125 for broken touch screens, $25 for damaged chargers and $25 for a case.

•Heard suggestions from Ford about changing policies regarding how items are placed on board meeting agendas and filling board openings. The board discussed both policies but decided not to move forward with Ford’s suggestions.

•Approved the following: the transfer of Jan McGalliard to become elementary student services coordinator; the hiring of Signature Therapy Services for occupational therapy services at a cost of $53 per hour; a leave of absence for East Elementary instructional assistant Lexie Penrod; bus requests from Jay Community Center for trips July 19 to Ball State University and July 30 to Berne City Park and Pool, and Jay County Public Library for its school bus orientation program Aug. 3; a new attorney contract with Coldren, Frantz and Sprunger for legal services because of a name change with the firm; a new five-year contract with Coca-Cola for soft drinks; textbooks for Topics in History classes; and middle and high school textbook fees.

•Hired high school driver education teachers Ted Habegger and Dennis Dwiggins, special education teacher Erin Ransom and guidance secretary Leslie Davis, and school psychologist Patricia Buchanan and speech/language pathologist Kelly Christy.

•Accepted the retirement of special education teacher Lori Mark, the resignations of Toby Todd (JCHS instructional assistant), Shalee Myron (speech/language pathologist), Bonnie Muhlenkamp (JCHS guidance secretary), Hailey Gross (elementary school art teacher), Nicole Chapman (WJMS part-time cook) and Westlawn Elementary kitchen manager Debbie Aker and the extracurricular resignations of East Jay Middle School athletics director Tammy Boltz, boys track/cross country coach Kurt Hess and EJMS sixth grade girls basketball coach Bill Saxman.

•Approved extracurricular assignments for EJMS eighth grade football coach Travis Theurer and assistant eighth grade football coach Brian Carr, JCHS part-time summer band guard instructors Leslie Schubert and Sarah Ullom, percussion instructor Mitch Snyder and girls tennis coach Dave Cramer.