No resource officer on horizon for GCSC

If he arrived in town with any doubts about the relationship between Greencastle Schools and Greencastle Police, Assistant Superintendent Donovan Garletts got a memorable lesson during his first week on the job back in June 2017.

Still brand new and making himself at home, Garletts pushed what appeared to be a doorbell in the GCSC Central Office building.

In turned out to be the emergency button that summoned local police to the building in an emergency.

Within one minute of Garletts pushing the button, six Greencastle Police officers arrived on the scene at 1002 Mill Pond Lane.

Seeing an unfamiliar face and prepared for the kind of serious incident that all too often makes headlines these days, the officers had their guns drawn until they could figure out who Garletts was.

“It was my second day here,” Garletts explained with a understanding laugh. “They didn’t know who I was.”

Superintendent Jeff Hubble and Garletts shared the story during the monthly Greencastle School Board meeting Monday as an illustration of their comfort level with local police response.

Asked by citizen Wayne Lewis about any increased security such as school resource officers and metal detectors, Hubble gave varied answers.

At this point, GCSC is not seeking school resource officers, with the GPD response time as an illustration of how the school-city partnership can perform.

“At this point, we get good response,” the superintendent said.

As for metal detectors, Hubble referred to Gov. Eric Holcomb’s recent pledge to provide metal detectors to schools throughout the state.

Garletts has signed up for the program, and GCSC should get one detector wand for every 200 students.

“We’ll have plenty of wands but we’ll have to have plenty of discussion about how we want to use them, when we want to use them.”

Those discussions can be had by a variety of well-informed administrators. Jennifer Finnerty had been the district school safety officer when she was still Greencastle High School assistant principal. Now that Yolanda Goodpaster will take over the assistant principal reins, she will also assume the school safety role.

However, several other administrators are also trained as school safety officers.

“We have an overabundance of school safety officers,” Hubble said.

Moving forward, school officials will continue to monitor matters of safety.

“Are we always having discussions about safety? Absolutely,” Hubble said.