Jessamine County Schools
Ensuring the Safety of Students and Staff
Information Series
If you have questions or concerns about school safety and security, please contact JCS Director of Student Services, Beth Carpenter.
Part 1
Partnerships with Law Enforcement and Emergency Services
The presence of trained law enforcement officers located within our schools is a critical component of the JCS safety plan. Our district is fortunate to have five exceptional full-time School Resource Officers (SRO) working every day in our secondary schools. Funded through a partnership between the Cities of Nicholasville and Wilmore, Jessamine County Fiscal Court, and the school district, the JCS SRO program has been named a state model by the Kentucky Center for School Safety. School Resource Officers Billy King, Sam Wade, Griff Howard, Erik Cobb, and Clint Newton work daily to provide safe learning environments in our schools, not only through their police work, but also through forming positive relationships with our students, helping them to build the capacity to overcome challenges. These law enforcement professionals interact with students on a daily basis, getting to know them as individuals, which helps our SRO’s to identify students who may be in crisis or who need additional support. Our data has shown that the JCS SRO program has had a tremendous impact in decreasing incidences of disorderly conduct, physical altercations, and theft, making our schools safer for students and staff.
In addition to the full-time SRO program at the secondary schools, our district has also collaborated with local law enforcement to provide part-time officers in our elementary schools and at JCTC. This school year, increased revenue from local taxes allowed us to expand those efforts and doubled the presence of police officers in those schools. In addition, law enforcement members visit through the “Adopt a School” program, stopping in at our schools whenever they’re in the area and utilizing our facilities to complete paperwork and other administrative duties. Our elementary schools benefit greatly from this positive police presence and we are grateful to our local law enforcement agencies for supporting this practice.
We are fortunate to be in a community where a true partnership exists between our school district and local law enforcement and emergency services. Each and every decision that we make on safety is reached with the utmost consideration of how we will work in tandem with our local partners. When district and local officials share information and work together on a regular basis, we are all better equipped to respond swiftly and appropriately to emergencies, whether the threat is related to inclement weather, a natural disaster, fire, or other safety concern. Local law enforcement has been provided with the information and tools that they need to more effectively respond to an emergency in our schools, including keys, blueprints, and electronic copies of our emergency plan. In order to facilitate immediate communication at any hour, district and school administrative teams and local police and emergency officials share cell phone numbers. In the event of an emergency, these and other proactive measures will save precious time and assist to more effectively address the situation.
The review, practice, and revision of emergency plans and procedures is paramount to an effective response to a real emergency. JCS administrators meet annually with the Nicholasville Police Department, Wilmore Police Department, and the Jessamine County Sheriff’s Department to review safety procedures and revise them as necessary. In the last five years, our local police agencies have helped us to implement four intruder training exercises for staff. Law enforcement and emergency officials present on safety at school staff meetings, participate in some of our safety drills, and they also help us to evaluate the effectiveness of our drills. They provide guidance to the district on the prioritization of safety initiatives and the funding of safety items. The Kentucky State Police have assisted our district as well, conducting a Run, Hide and Fight training for our staff, equipping them with the knowledge of how to better train and protect our students.
Safety is a shared responsibility, and district staff, local officials, and students and families all have a part. Our district’s Office of Student Services oversees and coordinates our safety measures and is also tasked with the investigation of information relayed through the district’s STOP tip line, used to report bullying or other safety concerns. This link can be found at the bottom of each school website as well as on the district website and allows us to address and resolve issues as quickly as possible.
Our collective goal is to utilize proactive measures to prevent threats to the safety of our students and staff. One way we do this is to learn from each practice event as well as each real-life event that takes place. For the past several years, following emergency events in Jessamine County, school district leadership has met with the Nicholasville Police Department to debrief, assess our actions, and if necessary, revise our future response to crises. All potentially serious threats to safety are investigated in tandem with local law enforcement as well.
Our proactive collaborations with local and state agencies are just one example of what we’re doing behind the scenes to ensure the safety of our students and staff. These partnerships are vital to our district goal of providing a safe and healthy culture. The next article in this series will discuss how we react in an emergency and will offer additional information about our respective roles as we all work together to ensure the safety of our JCS family.