Civil Municipal - June 2024

as a Certified School Safety Specialist for the District,” Hinshaw continues. “The person we have is an administrator at the high school; he’s been in that role for well over a decade. And we have an additional four or five people who are also trained. You are only required to have one; we have four or five. So, it’s something that we take very seriously. We have the ‘I Love You Guys’ Reunification Protocol and all of the things required for that, and we have practiced that a couple of times. (The I Love U Guys Foundation’s programs for crisis response and post-crisis reunification are used in more than 50,000 schools, districts, departments, agencies, organizations, and communities around the world.) One time, we had a gas leak and had to dismiss early, so that gave us an opportunity to use the evacuation process and the reunification process. So we were assured that every student was sent home in the right way to the right person.” BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE Schools must grow as student populations increase, and Yorktown has experienced enrollment growth every year for about 14 years, except for a small decrease during COVID-19. The total capital investment in classrooms, office space, and better security has been about $55 million since 2018. “We’ve built an elementary gymnasium where there was none before, and our next project is going to be focused on our high school science labs, which will be renovated,” Hinshaw states. “And we’re also going to be improving some sports performance space and strengthen the conditioning space at our high school.” Going forward, Hinshaw says that, in addition to the upcoming construction projects, the top focus in Yorktown will always be on student achievement: “In the K-5 setting, we were the recipient of an almost $300,000 early literacy grant from the State of Indiana. We have very high literacy scores, but that is just to bolster and shore them up and provide continuous improvement. In our middle and high school settings, my goal, always, is to try to provide as many opportunities for as many different kinds of kids as we can. For example, our Board just heard a report from our FCCLA (Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America) and our FACS (Family and Consumer Science) teacher. And that’s a 227 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 05, ISSUE 06 YORKTOWN COMMUNI TY SCHOOLS