Questions about school safety, declining enrollment and internet access for students were asked of the seven candidates running for Brown County Schools Board of Trustees on Oct. 3. They appeared at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Brown County.
Incumbent Carolyn Bowden is running against challenger Tabitha Hilligoss for the District 1 seat.
Vicki Harden is running against incumbent Judith Hardwick in District 2.
Three candidates are running for the District 3 seat: Incumbent Steve Miller Jr., Linda Hobbs and Tim Clark.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]School board is a nonpartisan office.
All voters in Brown County are eligible to vote for any of the candidates, regardless of the district in which they live.
Q: What marketing strategy would you consider to appeal to families in and outside the community to put their children in public schools?
Steve Miller Jr.: I wish we had younger couples that would like to stay in the county, but it seems like they’ve been moving away. I would love to see us work more with the Realtors, with the school academic achievements, to show how we compare with local school corporations is basically equal or better in most cases. We have an amazing small community here that does amazing things as far as academics are concerned. But just finding jobs locally for those to keep the younger couples here is one of the huge things. … Just keeping kids interested in finding jobs here locally will be huge. …
Linda Hobbs: …We have to let people know what good things we’re doing with the ROI (Regional Opportunities) initiative, and what that has brought and will bring over the next four or five years will be critical to let people know what kids can do without a secondary degree. … We literally have to market it. I think there’s probably been some discussion about that. We have to work with the Realtors, we have to work with the rest of community, the county, all of the entities. The Maple Leaf (county-owned performing arts center under construction), I know, is a sore issue in some places, but if it brings people and it brings jobs, then it may bring children, so we need work with all of the players and be part of the solution. …
Tim Clark: I think we have a phenomenal success stories in schools, quality schools and leaders. … You have to have a plan, so the economic development strategic plan is a start. That has to be aligned to the county comprehensive plan. … You sell the county, you sell the community. … We’re a bedroom community. People commute outside this county for good jobs. With broadband, people can stay home and work. ROI is an opportunity to not only provide a skilled workforce, but when you have those kinds of skills and those opportunities for our kids, statistics kind of tell you that companies are chasing the talent, and so when you have that program successful, and our kids have a place to go, I think it will attract employers. … You have to have a plan to identify what your strengths are, what your opportunities are and what specific steps you need to take to have a world-class community. That would be the goal, and that’s how I would market the schools.
Vicki Harden: We need to get out there and tell everybody how great our school is, like We the People and the new shop area where they are making their own things, T-shirts and stuff like that. … We also need to get businesses in here. … I see where some people don’t want different kinds of shops or businesses to come into Brown County. We need some business in Brown County so we can get people here to have decent jobs and maybe the younger people will stay. And housing, we need affordable housing. There are so many tourist houses, and we need houses for our young people so they can stay here in Brown County.
Judy Hardwick: I just came off the board of the RDC (Brown County Redevelopment Commission). I’ve been working with them about four to six years. They have done amazing things to try to draw people here. We’ve been working with Helmsburg to try get places set aside where we could build affordable housing. We are moving in that direction. … I think our superintendent does a wonderful job of marketing our schools. She has Facebook pages, she has the Brown County Blast she sends out to people, she writes articles in the newspaper, she is doing community conversations … She’s trying to do everything she can to inform and to market our school corporation and our county. We have an awesome school corporation, but we don’t have a lot of business here for people to work. I live up north, so therefore they drop their kids off at Indian Creek because they’ll drive through. … I am not sure how we combat that, but we can certainly give it a try.
Carolyn Bowden: I’d like to ditto everybody up the line so far. My dad asked me after my child was born, “How are the schools there in Brown County?” … My answer was, “It’s not how good the schools are as much as what you get out of the school, how much you put in as a person that you’re going to get out” … Some of the marketing that could we be using or not using so well … all different government boards promoting our school system. One of the things that we should be promoting is we are doing Project Lead the Way, which is a K-12 program and is not being done by a lot of other school corporations in our area. … We’re doing it through the whole school corporation. We were one of the first schools in this area to have STEM labs in every single building. …
Tabitha Hilligoss: Of course, affordable housing is a huge issue, but also, there’s no affordable child care in this county. We have one state-licensed daycare for this whole entire county, one, and it’s in Fruitdale. For people in Van Buren, that’s a long haul. … I would love to see better options for these parents that want to work, but can’t work because of childcare. I have a family member who pays $35 a day for childcare. You almost work to pay childcare sometimes, and that really puts a burden on these families. I think that’s a big reason why people don’t move here either. … I think we need to figure out how to help with that and I think that will bring more people back to our county as well.
Q: How do we keep our schools safe? And when the Salt Creek Trail runs through Eagle Park, how do you plan to protect students participating in school-sanctioned activities from serious sex offenders?
Hobbs: The student resource officer who has just been hired, that will be one of the first things we do, and I am sure that’s the first of many to protect. I know my son got a text from the corporation about students now have to be dropped off. No parents will be going in. … We are making those steps forward. Once that trail is planned, I am sure that the sheriff’s department, school corporation, the officers will have to have a plan to put that in place, and that won’t be taken lightly, I am certain. … You have to pick battles, but you have to prepare the best you can under the circumstances. I think that’s an unknown that will have to take a lot of planning. …
Clark: On safe schools, I went to the (community conversation) session at the schools. … The state has an excellent program and we have an excellent plan. That’s what you need. On the Salt Creek Trail … you put relevant stakeholders together, look at your threats, look at your risks and design a plan, and then test that plan to make sure the kids are safe as possible.
Harden: For the safety of the school, we do have a service guy that we just hired. Once he starts, I think that will help. I read where the high school now has a machine, like when you go in, you have to have a driver’s license and you have to get a badge and everything. Then, dropping your children off at the door, I know when my granddaughter lived with us and I would take her to before-school daycare, I just walked right in, tried to find out where they were, and I thought, “Anybody could have done that.” … For the trail, I think working with the policemen, I think they would help us. Then with our safety plan, with us all working together, I think we should be able to keep our kids safe with that.
Hardwick: On keeping the schools safe, you have to be buzzed into the school before they can come in. They have the availability where they see who you are before you come in. … You’re only buzzed into the office, you’re not into the school itself. … You have to sign in, they have to know who you are, then you can walk into the school. The trail, we have met with the DNR (Indiana Department of Natural Resources). … When we’re running the races out there, we told them we would have to have the availability to shut that trail down, so that we wouldn’t have people trying to walk on that trail or people trying to in any way disrupt these cross-country races. … They said that would be fine with them. … We will have cameras out there. …
Bowden: To add on to Judy’s comments relating to the trail, first, Brown County parks and rec is the agency that will ultimately be responsible for the trail from Point A to Point B — not just Eagle Park, but from CVS all the way to DNR (the state park). … We plan to have cameras out there. As far as school security related to drugs, guns and other, that’s one of the reasons we have the SOR (school resource officer). … We have a grant from Lilly for counseling. We have counseling in all of the schools. We have that availability so we can try to get to those students before they get into the drug lives and so on. … (We’ve had) ALICE training, which has gone on already with the administrative staff, teaching staff and others, on what to do if we had a situation like Noblesville. … We have a great collaboration between our administrative staff and law enforcement. …
Hilligoss: As a parent, having a school resource officer now is amazing — although I will have to say, I don’t feel like I send my child to an unsafe school. I think it was two years ago they got the locking doors where they had the camera and you had to be buzzed in. That was huge. … I think our school safety is actually amazing considering we’re small community. I think they’ve done a great job of that. As for the trail, you do have to prepare your children for situations like that. You don’t ever hope for that. Maybe having officers patrol. Maybe town can collaborate with the county to make it safe. I don’t feel like it’s unsafe. I’m more scared of the snakes I see than anything else. …
Miller: For the current security issues we have at school, I think it all starts with awareness with our teachers and administrators who see the kids on a daily basis. They read social media. … It’s all about awareness and keeping an eye on how kids interact. I think the school resource officer will be a big help. That’s not 100 percent guaranteed in any situation, but we do have amazing people here in charge that do keep aware of how things are going on a daily basis. As far as the trail goes, the part of trail that will go across school is still under negotiation. … I am going to ask that the cameras that are on the school property have facial recognition technology based on sexual predators in our area. Anyone can go on a website now and see those faces, so the technology is there. …
Q: Many students have school-supplied computers for homework, but do not have access to the internet. How do you think this should this be addressed?
Clark: Long-term, I think it’s great that the REMCs are making an investment in broadband. On the other, just ideas, I think some of the sessions I went to with the schools they talked about hotspots for wireless. They put it on a bus and moved it around the county to give the kids access to the internet. The other, I would just identify the challenge and maybe go out to the community on that and ask for ideas as well. … Just be creative, I think. Long-term, it’s great on the REMCs. Short-term, innovative, put the full hotspots on the buses or however you do that. That may be an option based on the density of the kids who need it. Then, leverage the resources we have, the community foundation being one of them.
Harden: A lot of people who don’t have access, it’s hard to just get by. To even have to pay to be able to get access would be hard for people. … I know my daughter lives out in Van Buren Township and they don’t have it. They get most of their homework done, and I know the schools have study time and stuff like that where they can get it on the computer, or she takes them to the library. I know REMC put all of that (infrastructure in). That will be good as long as they don’t raise the bills too much or anything like that. Right now, there’s not much to do.
Hardwick: … At our next community conversation we’re going to talk about eLearning days. … If we have a day where they can’t go to school, then what they can do if you don’t have internet, they can go ahead and put on that (school-supplied computer) all of the things to work on for that day, so all you do is just access your (school-supplied computer). … Internet would be nice to have, but you don’t have to have it. … There are some times we have to go so long in the school year because we have so many days that are off due to snow and everything. (E-Learning) would cut that down. …
Bowden: … ELearning is the concept of having the technology to be able to take home. You upload … whatever assignments are by the end of the day. … You can work on it that night. … (If) we know that we’ve got a storm coming up and we’re probably going to be closed on Friday, so Thursday, the teachers will already be doing that. … If they’re back to school on Monday, they walk in and the first thing they are going to do in the first 10 to 15 minutes is upload that. That is for those who do not have internet connection. Of course, if it’s snowing or icing, you may not have internet connection anyways because your satellite or broadband is all covered up in material. There’s also hotspots in the school parking lot. If you pull into a school parking lot, you can tap in. … Little by little, that will happen more and more in the county, but it will take time for that internet. …
Hilligoss: … Luckily, so far my third-grader has not brought home a computer yet and I will be scared when she does, because I don’t know how to work it very well. … You upload it (an assignment) while you’re at school online so you can do the work at home because you don’t have internet there. Maybe students just aren’t communicating that to their parents very well, or maybe they just themselves don’t understand how to upload it and just have not asked for help. You don’t have to have it (the internet) to do your work. You have to have it to get it loaded, which you can do at school to take home and do offline.
Miller: I think it’s great that REMC is finally getting on board with that (broadband expansion), but that only covers Helmsburg and Van Buren. … I think it’s incumbent on everyone in here to vote for legislators. If they are going to mandate us to have online courses, then they need to supply rural counties with high-speed access, period. … I think it’s great the kids can upload their programs on their (school-supplied computers) and take them home and do the work, but all of our buses are going to have a Wi-Fi antenna on them, so they can, in worst-case scenario, as soon as get on the bus and get into a hotspot range, they can download their homework or wait until they get to school. … But the bottom line is we’re not the only rural county suffering from this. … The state has to put some more pressure on the local people that can do high-speed internet in our area if they’re going to mandate that for us.
Hobbs: I think it’s a very good beginning and what they are doing is wonderful. … Morgan County (REMC) has one section and they are phasing it in three sections, which will cover a good chunk of our county. … As I learned they can upload and download, it’s (internet) not quite as critical as we might think. It’s how they choose to do their homework and do their timing, which is a really good lesson for kids to have to figure out how I have to do what and when. I think it behooves us as a corporation to work with the folks to try to get increased access for all of our students. It never hurts to lobby our legislators.
