Commission trumpets progress in school safety.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2006 The News-Sentinel

Byline: Victoria Edwards

Jun. 6--Allen County schools are safer now than they were 18 months ago, when they received a federal grant of $333,470 to implement and improve existing programs, according to a commission formed nearly six years ago after the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Officials with the Allen County School Safety Commission, comprised of 27 agencies including public, parochial and private schools, as well as law enforcement and other public service agencies, presented a progress report Tuesday morning on how the money has been spent.

Before receiving the money, school districts already were in the process of increasing building security by limiting access, adding security cameras and hiring school resource officers, among other things. Also, schools started lockdown drills and installed electronic locks to monitor who comes and goes. "Schools don't create crime and violence and the other societal ills but they have to be prepared to try to prevent them and manage them if they occur within the school setting," said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland, Ohio. Money from the grant was used to hire Trump's company, among others, to help the commission implement programs that taught school resource officers, for example, how to work with administration to respond to a crisis situation. "Parents want to know two things," Trump said. "One is what steps have school officials taken to prevent an incident from happening. And two, how well prepared are school-safety officials to manage the incidents that could be prevented? There is no 100 percent guarantee of security from the school house to the White House." Trump said the grant helped Allen County schools conduct hypothetical exercises to prepare administrators and school safety officers for specific crisis situations. "We tried to take it to next level in terms of building on different (hypothetical) elements (that occur in an emergency) such as an overload of cell phones calls and communications breakdowns." The grant, one of only 100 awarded nationwide, helped put school safety on the front burner in Allen County, Trump said. In the last three years, Allen County's four public-school districts experienced a 48 percent drop in the number of expulsions and suspensions involving weapons, drugs or alcohol, according to the Indiana Department of Education. "(Allen County) is in the upper tier of places in the state with what they are doing," said David Woodward, program coordinator for the Indiana School Safety Specialists Academy, a division of the Department of Education. "For what Allen County has, I don't think they could have done better."

But the news isn't all good. In 2004, 18 deadly weapons were confiscated at school, up from 10 the year before. That increase follows a national trend that saw increases in non-fatal shootings and aggressive student behavior, among other things, Trump said. He attributed the increase in Allen County's weapons confiscation rate to heightened awareness and an enhanced ability to take action. "As a parent I'm more concerned if a problem exists and is being ignored, than if a problem is there and not being dealt with." ------------ Weapons confiscated in Allen County public schools Year*Number 2004*18 2003*10

2002*24 2001*3 2000*13

Copyright (c) 2006, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

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