EACS Superintendent gives failing grade to proposed southeast side jail

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Fort Wayne’s NBC) - The fight to stop a new Allen County Jail from being built on Fort Wayne’s southeast side now has the support of a major county school system.

Members of the East Allen County Schools Board of Trustees want county officials to choose a different location.

“I fully support the board’s stance on the resolution,” EACS Superintendent Marilyn Hissong said.

In a news release, board members say they object to using county owned land at Paulding and Adams Center Roads because it’s near four different schools in their district. Hissong says that her biggest concern from the beginning was keeping students safe.

“Safety is a factor at all of our schools,” Hissong said. “Whether there’s a jail there or not, that brings some extra fear for the students, but I would say safety is important in East Allen.”

Superintendent Hissong says this is how board members have felt all along. However, she says it was important for them to do their research so they could take a firm stance.

“I think that we want to make sure the right message is sent and that we’re supporting our children,” Hissong said. “So we don’t want our children to grow up in an environment where they see the jail on a regular basis when they’re coming to school, that’s not an environment that promotes them to learn and inspires them to do great things.”

Members of some groups against a jail going in that area have been critical of how county leaders have handled the situation. They say they haven’t been involved in discussions, but Hissong says that wasn’t the case for district leaders.

“We really appreciated Nelson Peters,” Hissong said. “When this all first started happening, we wanted to get more information. Nelson took the time to meet us our at the site so that we could actually physically see for ourselves.”

We reached out to Peters to get his response to the board members’ position.

“I’m not surprised,” Peters said in a text message. “Nobody wants a jail in their backyard and this is their backyard.”

County leaders are set to meet with a federal judge once again on December 16.

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