Mock incident to test safety
With the cooperation of Operation Life, the Greencastle Community School Corp. will conduct a mock incident next semester.
Operation Life representative Jenny Lien approached the Putnam County Safe Schools Committee during its monthly meeting Thursday to discuss the event. She also expressed a desire to conduct other mock incidents at the remaining three county schools in the future.
"We are targeting April 13 (2007) for Greencastle," Lien told the 27 committee members at Thursday's meeting.
Lien said the goal of the project was to allow children and their parents an opportunity to see different agencies that might respond to an incident and how they work together.
"It's community awareness," Lien said. "They're really interested in it."
GCSC School Safety Specialist and Greencastle Middle School Principal Shawn Gobert said mock incidents have taken place within the corporation before.
Gobert added even though April 13 was a half-day for students, he anticipated having the event take place that day regardless.
Lien said OL had proposed a mock school shooting as the likely incident, but officials declined.
"The actual disaster scenario hasn't been set yet," she said.
Lien said she hoped to conduct mock drills at all the schools in the future.
"We would like to circulate to all of the schools and all of the communities with different events," she said. "This needs to benefit everybody."
Meanwhile, the board met Dave Woodward, Program Coordinator for the Indiana School Safety Specialists Academy on Thursday. Woodward said he had been traveling throughout the state hoping to meet with all county safe school committees.
"I want to learn from you guys," Woodward told the members Thursday. "I want to know what you guys are doing."
Following Thursday's meeting, Woodward congratulated the local board, saying it was miles ahead of many others in the state.
In other business, the board:
-- Learned that the hand-held radios Putnam County Health Dept. representative Steve Walters had talked about in September were in. Each school safety specialist will be equipped with one of the radios, which have 34 channels and cost an estimated $1,500 each.
The radios were purchased for the schools by the health department, along with the Putnam County Sheriff's Dept. and the Putnam County Emergency Management Agency with money from the Department of Homeland Security.
"It's a huge benefit during crisis situations," Gobert said.
-- Reviewed established goals for the upcoming school year, which included continuing to pursue funding; continuing to develop school safety specialists; continuing to update the character education initiative; and to establish parent education nights, which would focus on drug education, bullying prevention, safety information and other topics.
-- Learned from Putnam County Youth Development Commission representative Pam Turner that there was available money for the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program. Turner said there was $20,000 available for Putnam County and the grant was to serve 71 youth in the county in after-school programming. She said there were 11 current youth participating in the program, which consisted of 18 sessions during nine weeks.
-- Received an update from South Putnam High School Assistant Principal Dan Bain regarding independent consultant Jennifer Meadows, a grant writer the committee has worked with. Bain said he had contacted Meadows and requested she meet with the committee in November.
"She wants to try to get us some funding of sorts," Bain said. "But I want it to be a group decision."
The group agreed to meet with Meadows in November.
The board meets regularly on the first Thursday of each month at the Miller Education Center, 522 Anderson St., Greencastle. Its next meeting is at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 2.