Lebanon Police and Lebanon City Schools are working together to bolster school safety by establishing police offices inside select schools.

The offices at Lebanon High School, Bowman Primary and Lebanon Junior High are operating locations, not police substations, said Lebanon Police Chief Jeffrey Mitchell.

“(Calling it) a substation gives the impression that there’s somebody there full time and there’s not,” he said. “This is a designated location that police officers can use as their day unfolds.”

That means 24-hour access to the school to make phone calls, take and complete a report or work from their computers.

“If we go to the high school or the junior high on a call, say there’s a problem there, a theft or something along those lines, we don’t have to displace a counselor or an assistant principal or somebody by using their office,” Mitchell said. “We have an office where we can talk to students, staff, parents, whoever.”

The small offices were most recently used by non-teaching staff or for storage and make police accessible to students, parents and school staff.

The move, which comes at no cost to the school district, was a collaborative effort that was discussed for nearly a year by the police department, school principals and district administrators.

The Dec. 14 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., was the impetus for those involved in the effort to re-examine a school safety plan and implement measures to help strengthen it, Mitchell said.

The move benefits students and teachers, who are seeing officers in school hallways more often, he said.

“There’s more opportunities for interaction, more opportunities to develop a comfort level with having the police in the building,” Mitchell said.

Lebanon High School Principal Scott Butler said having officers in the building is “a win-win” for the police department and the school district’s students and staffers.

“They’re working us in to part of their normal routine,” he said.

Mitchell said he’s even encouraging officers to take their lunches at the school rather than coming back to the station.

Each office has its own extension within the school’s telephone system to allow students to leave anonymous voice mails about criminal activity they may have heard about or witnessed outside of school.

Superintendent Mark North said the district greatly appreciates Mitchell’s leadership in serving and protecting the community by establishing the operating locations within the schools.

“We’ve seen a noticeable enhancement in officers being present in our buildings,” North said.

The police department is scheduled to conduct a closed-door executive session workshop for school administration and school board members Feb. 4 to provide an overview of their role in responding to school-related emergency situations.