In a week, students will return to Brown County Schools. Over the summer, the district has taken steps to ensure their safety and success.
Here are some changes students, staff and parents may notice.
Security work
The front entrance at Brown County Intermediate School hasn’t been remodeled yet, but it will be later in August and September, Superintendent Laura Hammack said. Plans were approved late last month.
Initially, the district was going to use some of the $3 million in bond money approved earlier this year to remodel entrances at BCIS and Brown County Junior High School, but the price tag for the BCIS work came in higher than expected.
“We actually had to work around a restroom. When all of that needed to be moved, it became much more expensive,” Hammack said.
After the remodel, visitors will enter the front doors and be buzzed into a front office to the right instead of the left. The second set of glass doors currently in the building will become a wall.
A classroom is being turned into the new front office. The principal and assistant principal will work out of that space, Hammack said. The current front office will be turned into either more office space or a work space.
At BCJHS, work still is being done to make the entrance more secure. The front windows will be covered with a bullet-resistant film.
“What it does is it traps a bullet. The glass doesn’t fall to the ground. It spiders out, but it doesn’t fall. It slows down the impact of that bullet. The bullet might actually go through the window, but it’s so slow so it doesn’t do damage,” Hammack said.
“It gives you time. At that time you know an event is happening and you can call first responders who then can come and neutralize that threat.”
Previously, visitors to BCJHS were buzzed into a reception area, then would sign in before opening a second set of doors to the school.
Now, visitors will be buzzed into the first set of doors, and the second set of doors will remain locked until they are signed in and buzzed in again.
“Any visitors will be locked into that entryway right there. They can’t get into the junior high school once they are through that first layer,” Hammack said. “It’s 10 times better than it has been without a full-on remodel.”
“It’s extraordinary how much thought and effort we have spent with this (security) issue. It’s such a responsibility. Over the last year or two, it’s really amazing how much has been done,” Hammack said.
“But honestly, what keeps me up in the middle of the night is we still have so much work to do. Even with all that we’ve done, there is still not enough.”
More safety measures
Through a state program, Brown County Schools will receive seven metal detector wands. The Brown County Schools Board of Trustees is expected to look over the protocol for using those wands at their next meeting in August.
“You just can’t say, ‘It’s the first day of school; everyone gets wanded.’ There are lots of pieces we have to put in place,” Hammack said at the July 19 board meeting, when she presented the board with the policy.
After the policy is in place, teams will be trained to use the metal detectors in each building. Notices will have to be posted in the schools that a person or their belongings could be searched with a metal detector, and that weapons are not permitted.
An armed school resource officer also is joining the district.
The district was awarded a $50,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Homeland Security to hire the officer, who will be an employee of the Brown County Sheriff’s Department.
He or she will be based at Brown County High School, but will be able to respond to any school if needed. The officer’s focus will be on building relationships with students and parents. The sheriff’s department is in the process of hiring that person.
The district also hired a vendor to align the phone systems, computers and personal cellphones in each building to the public address systems so that a lockdown could be called from anywhere in the building, instead of only from the school office.
“If there is an active threat in the hallway and you can’t get to the hallway to call a lockdown, that is a problem because there is no ability to inform the rest of your school. That really has been something that has bothered us for the last few years here,” Hammack said. “Now, say you’re in classroom 101 and there is an active event taking place in that space; the teacher in that classroom could call a lockdown from that space.”
A team of 50 people from the schools and community will attend ALICE training this week so that they can train other people. ALICE stands for “alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate.”
“A huge part of ALICE is you have to empower everyone in your schools, from your custodians to your students to your teachers to your administrators. Anyone, if they see something that does not look right, can call a lockdown from any space,” Hammack said.
“I would much rather have a false lockdown, false alert happen then folks feeling like, ‘Well, I need to tell my teacher to do this. I’m not allowed as a student. I see a really weird looking guy walking down the hallway. I’m going to be empowered to make a decision.’”
Hammack wrote in her Superintendent’s Corner column last month that prior to ALICE, lockdown procedures involved staff locking their doors, moving the students to a part of the room where they could not be seen, and quietly remaining there until an “all clear” announcement was given.
Students will learn ALICE, too.
Other security improvements include protective bollards being installed in front of all of the schools, and new video cameras being installed on all school corporation-owned buses.
Even more of an emphasis will be placed on the mental health and wellness of students this year.
Sandy Washburn, an assistant research scientist with Indiana University and the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, is working on the district’s social/emotional learning curriculum. She’s also weighing in on how the district handles mental health and victims of trauma.
Her work is being funded by a grant. “She is a state leader in positive behavior intervention support,” Hammack said. “She said she wants to be a part of a movement, and she really feels like Brown County is headed in that direction, for us to do something really unique and different.”
School openings
By the end of July, all open teaching positions had been filled. Nine new educators are joining the district.
“We didn’t have that much shifting this year as we have in years past,” Hammack said.
“Some of them are brand new teaching; some of them have a lot of experience. We have a nice diversity of folks coming in. … We’re really excited for the new crew. They’re really talented people.”
Openings for preschool are available in all three of elementary schools. Parents can call the schools to get more information.
Preschool scholarships also are still available for families that qualify. Those scholarships are currently funded by the Brown County Community Foundation, but the funding is only pledged through the end of this school year.
At that point, Hammack said the plan is for the district to receive funding from the state’s On My Way Pre-K program. The district has been working on getting certified so it can offer On My Way scholarships to income-eligible families.
As administrative assistants returned from summer vacation, phones began ringing with parents wanting to enroll their children in preschool and other grades in the district, Hammack said.
“Enrollment is one of the things that’s most predominantly on my mind,” she said.
“I am cautiously optimistic that our numbers will be up as compared with last year. … I would love, love to see us hold tight with our ADM (enrollment count) from last year. If we could do that, that says we’re in a consistent pattern. That will really help us as we plan for the future.”
This year, the district’s funding from the state will be based on the September enrollment count only. In the past, it was based on both the September and February enrollment counts, and the fall county was typically higher.
Currently, enrollment is projected to be down by about 50 students, based on the count from the end of last school year. The number of students attending Brown County Schools last fall was 1,878, and the total fell by 57 by the end of the school year.
“That is very concerning to me. We are hopeful that kind of like last year we will be up in the fall again, that we will win some new families,” Hammack said.
Families moving out of the county and parents taking students out of public school to home-school them are two of the reasons administrators have heard as to why students withdraw.
The district has put together an exit survey to give to families to understand why people leave the district. “Sometimes they move, and then we just get a request for records from the school district where they are. Then, that’s all that we’ve got,” Hammack said.
Parents enrolling their children in preschool is a way district leaders hope to attract and keep new families.
“It’s an early intervention for kids, but it’s also a recruiting tool, because families fall in love with the school they are in, and then we get to keep them as they make that jump from pre-K into kindergarten,” she said.
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For the first time, nearly all Brown County students will have Chromebooks to use in school.
Junior high and high school students will be able to take their devices home to use for homework and studying.
Elementary and intermediate school students will leave theirs at school to charge at the end of the day. Kindergartners will be the youngest group to get them.
“It’s just so exciting,” Superintendent Laura Hammack said of the devices. “This is the first time we can genuinely say we’re one-to-one.”
The district also bought iPads for all science classrooms in the district. They will run the new Project Lead the Way curriculum, centered on computer science and engineering.
The ROI Ready Schools Initiative made clear their “responsibility to provide a workforce to our region,” said Superintendent Laura Hammack.
“Over and over again we are told that industry is willing to train, but industry needs students graduating from high school with 21st-century workforce readiness skills. Being able to interact with technology beyond engaging in just games on a phone is a fundamental part of that preparedness,” Hammack said.
“Our students are not only competing with students in urban settings across the country, but our students are competing with students their age in China and across the world. The way to advance their skill set is to provide access. We feel like it’s our responsibility to do that,” Hammack said.
The district is still teaching educators how to integrate technology into the classroom, she said.
“I think it’s really important for parents to understand even though we have access to these extraordinary devices, you’re still going to see kids rolled up in a corner with a good book and also having very personal interactions with their educators as well,” she said.
“It’s one tool in a much broader, balanced methodology for instruction.”
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The school board is looking over a policy to govern when handheld metal detectors are used in Brown County schools. The district is getting seven of them through a state program. The proposal includes the following points:
- A notice will be sent to parents and students before the beginning of school and at least once per semester, letting them know of the policy and possible searches. Notice also will be posted on the school’s website, and will be in all student handbooks.
- Metal detectors can be used when there’s “reasonable suspicion” a person may have a weapon or during a planned search, according to the policy. But the planned searches have to be done at random, such as on every fifth student who enters the building, or on entire buses or classrooms. “Metal detector checks of groups of individuals may not be used to single out a particular individual or category of individuals,” the proposed policy states.
- A student cannot be searched just because they look “suspicious.” An administrator or officer must have “reasonable suspicion that the student is in possession of an illegal or unauthorized metal-containing object or weapon,” the policy states.
- Prior to being searched, the process will be explained, and students will be escorted to a designated area with their belongings. The student will be asked to remove all metal-containing objects from their clothing or personal belongings. The administrator or officer will then scan the student without touching their body and scan the outside of their belongings. If the student refuses to cooperate, “the administrator or officer may proceed with the check in the presence of another adult,” the policy states.
- If the metal detector goes off during the search of their belongings, the student will be asked to open their bag, purse, etc. Those items will then be searched for weapons.
- If it goes off while the student’s body is being searched, the student will be given a second opportunity to remove any metal-containing objects from their body, the policy states. If the detector goes off again, then an administrator or officer of the same sex will pat down the student’s clothing in the place where the metal detector went off, the policy states. The pat-down search would be done in a private room in the presence of an adult witness.
- If an object is felt, the student will be given the opportunity to remove it. If the student refuses to remove the object, the administrator or officer will remove it in the presence of an adult witness of the same sex, the policy states.
- Any weapon or illegal items found during searches will be turned over to the “proper legal authorities for disposition.”
The school board will review this policy at both of their meetings this month, on Aug. 2 and 16.
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First day back: Wednesday, Aug. 8
School hours:
Helmsburg and Van Buren elementary schools: 7:50 a.m. to 3:25 p.m.
Sprunica Elementary School: 7:45 a.m. to 3:25 p.m.
Brown County Intermediate School: 8:10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Brown County Junior High School: 8:20 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Brown County High School: 8:20 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Open houses:
Elementaries: 5 to 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 6
Intermediate: 6 to 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 6
Junior high: 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 8
High school: 6 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 8
More info: See the back-to-school section in the July 25 paper or visit browncountyschools.com.
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