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The best school safety tool we have doesn’t plug in.
When business leaders ask me about safety at Clark-Pleasant Community School Corp., they usually ask about hardware: cameras, secure entrances, visitor screening. We have invested in all of those. Still, I can tell you the two decisions that shape school safety most are the same two that shape any well-run company: who you hire and how carefully you spend.
A school district is a public enterprise. We manage a payroll, a fleet, facilities and a budget, and we answer to taxpayers the way a CEO answers to shareholders. Safety is one of our core operations, and we run it with the same discipline your leadership team applies to risk, talent and capital.
Business leaders have a direct stake in how well we do it. Every parent on your payroll carries the same question into work each morning: Is my child safe today? An employee who is worried about a child is not fully focused on the job. The students in our hallways are also your future workforce, and the quality of a community’s schools is part of every conversation about where families choose to live and where companies choose to grow.
Hire for experience and culture
In 2019, Clark-Pleasant established its own full-time, sworn police department. We are a growing suburban district in Johnson County, and we wanted officers dedicated to our schools every day.
Two years later, we made one of the most important hires in the department’s history. Chad Pryce joined us as chief after more than two decades with the City of Indianapolis, where he worked patrol, academy instruction, field training, emergency response and mounted patrol.
Any executive who has recruited a seasoned leader understands that decision. Experience brings judgment built over years, along with relationships with the partners you depend on in a crisis. A proven leader also sets the culture everyone else follows.
Chief Pryce credits mounted patrol with shaping his approach. People who would never walk up to an officer would stop to see the horse and start a conversation. He learned that trust comes before influence, and he built that lesson into our department. Its guiding belief is “Relationships are a prerequisite for influence.”
Companies call this relationship management. In a school, it means officers who know students by name, walk them to class and show up at school events. When a student is struggling, there is an officer that student already trusts. That relationship often surfaces a concern before it becomes a crisis.
Measure the work
Businesses manage what they measure, and so do we. The Clark-Pleasant Police Department has seven full-time sworn officers, three K9s and two information analysts. Last school year, the department recorded 3,790 activities, including traffic direction at arrival and dismissal, campus patrols, student programs and emergency response.
Much of that activity is proactive. Any operations executive will recognize the logic of preventive maintenance: the cheapest problem to fix is the one you catch early. School safety works the same way.
Treat every dollar as capital
Our spending rule is simple. If used equipment does the job safely, we buy used. If it does not, we buy new.
CFOs will recognize total cost of ownership thinking. A sound asset decision weighs today’s price against what the asset delivers over its useful life and asks whether a lower-cost option meets the same standard. Safety is the one area where we will not compromise on that standard, which is exactly why we are disciplined about everything around it.
Get more from what you already own
Many organizations respond to a new challenge by buying a new system. We looked first at what we already had.
When our department moved to a Real-Time Information Center model, most of the monitoring tools were already in place. Camera feeds, dispatch calls, incident reports and bus route activity lived in separate places. The change brought them together so officers receive the right information faster. Staff members who were already monitoring those feeds moved into new roles as information analysts.
Business leaders will see two familiar moves in that decision. The first is data integration, turning scattered inputs into one operating picture. The second is upskilling, giving experienced employees larger roles instead of recruiting from scratch. Both cost less than a new platform and a new team, and both build on institutional knowledge you cannot buy.
Keep your front line on the front line
The department is also creating a detective position. Serious investigations take time and specialized skill. When those cases pull a school resource officer out of a building, students and staff lose the daily presence that makes the whole model work. A dedicated detective keeps our officers where they belong.
Companies make the same choice when they route complex escalations to a specialist so account managers can stay with their clients.
The same principle extends beyond our campuses. When something happens at one of our schools, our own officers respond. Local police officers and sheriff’s deputies stay on patrol, available to the neighborhoods, roads and businesses that depend on them. A school district that handles its own calls protects the public safety resources every employer in the community relies on.
What schools and businesses owe each other
School safety is a challenge not just in our community, but statewide and nationwide. Every district faces the question every employer faces: How do you protect people well without spending carelessly?
At Clark-Pleasant, our answer rests on principles any board of directors would endorse. Hire experienced leaders who set the right culture. Measure the work. Spend public money as carefully as your own. Integrate the tools you already own before buying new ones. Keep your best people doing the work that matters most.
The business community has a role to play. Share your expertise in operations, technology and risk with your local school district. Invite superintendents and school safety leaders to the table when you plan emergency responses for your own workplaces. Ask how your schools manage risk, and expect a clear answer.
Strong schools and strong businesses depend on each other. Running a safe school and running a successful company require many of the same habits, and our students, employees and communities are better served when leaders in both sectors hold each other to that standard.
Dr. Timothy Edsell is superintendent of Clark-Pleasant Community School Corp. in Whiteland.
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