School Security

[juicemon]

My cousin is a custodian at a 1500 student suburban high school. During a recent discussion he outlined various school security measures including, among other things, ingress blockades and lock down procedures. He then went on to tell me that the phys ed coaches and students routinely block the rear door open during class so they won't have to use their keys every time someone needs to leave/reenter the building. Makes you feel all warm and safe, doesn't it?

[Sledhead]

That happens everywhere doors are locked.

[AM1958]

Security, or the art of it, is a straight line. At one end is security and at the other end is usability. The art is finding the balance for the particular instance. In this case the way that door is secured is weighted too heavily towards security and therefore loses almost all of it. The issue would be the requirement of the coaches to have to carry keys. Consider putting keypads or fingerprint scanners on the door while making it quite clear that blocking open the doors will become a disciplinary issue.

[november sunrise]

Security at our Schools is a must. Locks, passwords, Badges and metal detectors may help but the only thing that will stop someone with ill intent and determination will be another human with proper training monitoring the entrance with a gun. Not a walkie talkie or a bully stick. A GUN!
I have a kid in School. Banning any type of weapon or it's magazine capacity to the general public is stupid. I'm all in for armed guards. Not like the panzy ass guard in Florida that didn't even make an attempt to help. I insist on a REAL guard!
The gun laws worked to prevent the Florida shooting. The idiot had been under the watchful eye of the FBI for months. I read they visited his home 39 times. It was the Federal Government's FBI that failed those kids. I feel the FBI should be held accountable for the whole thing.

[firespec35]

So why don't the schools lobby major businesses in the area. As they're upgrading their tech for access control give the last generation to the schools. They can have swipecard or proximity tech for basically the cost of cards. There wouldn't need to be a lot of access points and you could disable the cards of suspended or expelled students.

[luckless]

The first shooter to figure out that those kids are sitting ducks while they line up for the bus or sit in the stands for a basketball game will make all of those fancy locks useless, anyway.

[xtrema312]

There's a solution to that problem. Install security camera system and access control to control all exterior doors. Access Control monitors door positions and alerts someone of a blocked open door fairly quickly. Security cameras provide overall surveillance and should include view of every exterior door. If someone sticks something in a locked door, you see who it is and you get the door secured quickly. Then you address the person who put something in the door. In a school situation that would be unpaid disciplinary leave automatically or being expelled the very first offense. I installed an access control system in a 235,000 square foot building three years ago. We went from finding unlock doors routinely somewhere in the building to almost zero instances of unsecured doors over multiple years. In the process right now of a significant upgrade to our camera system but our old system at least covered exterior doors. We are able to address a unsecured door within minutes and go directly to the individual responsible to curb the behavior. First couple of years we had lot of door alarms, but that's gone down a lot. It was pretty good investment but not undoable. I cannot imagine having a school today that doesn't have those things in it regardless of school shooting situations. Key control and general security alone make the access control system well worth the investment. There shouldn't be a school that doesn't have good security camera system particularly a high school.

[cmr19xx]

The first shooter to figure out that those kids are sitting ducks while they line up for the bus or sit in the stands for a basketball game will make all of those fancy locks useless, anyway.

No solution is going to be perfect. Its going to take a combination of solutions and even then, someone hell bent on doing it is going to find a way. In the end, all that can be done is to minimize the chances and fatalities. The one thing I'm certain of is that more gun laws is not the solution.

[UpNorthWOLF]

My cousin is a custodian at a 1500 student suburban high school. During a recent discussion he outlined various school security measures including, among other things, ingress blockades and lock down procedures. He then went on to tell me that the phys ed coaches and students routinely block the rear door open during class so they won't have to use their keys every time someone needs to leave/reenter the building. Makes you feel all warm and safe, doesn't it?

Also from a Metro-Detroit HS....
1. If the teacher is out with a class and a kid needs to go to the bathroom, they need to get back inside the building. Teacher can't go with them and leave the rest of the class and the kid can't take the keys.
2. Kids were always leaving by doors to skip, go to work, head to other schools for special programs, etc. And other kids sometimes opened doors for others coming in late (they still had to go to the office to check in, but some of these schools are HUGE). You can't chain them because of fire code. In an OLD building I was in with intricate stairways the hidden-from-view doors were locked because there had been a multiple-rape years earlier (when there was a fire alarm we had to run down quickly and unchain it).
3. We required the kids to have and carry their IDs... Made it an issue for leaving the room to the bathroom, etc. (also a planner, where they had the sign out sheets for the passes and a record of when they were gone). I bet half the kids never had their damn ID and/or planner (or a pencil or their books). I didn't let them go and wrote them up if they walked out (they should have gone between classes instead of jawing with friends). I also only allowed two passes per semester - Never the first or last 10 minutes of class. (some kids used them both the first week, others never did), other staff let them go whenever they wanted to. Administration was always wishy washy on enforcement, though THEY passed the mandates down. Oh, and parents went crazy about some of those rules.

[partdeux]

There's a solution to that problem. Install security camera system and access control to control all exterior doors. Access Control monitors door positions and alerts someone of a blocked open door fairly quickly. Security cameras provide overall surveillance and should include view of every exterior door. If someone sticks something in a locked door, you see who it is and you get the door secured quickly. Then you address the person who put something in the door. In a school situation that would be unpaid disciplinary leave automatically or being expelled the very first offense. I installed an access control system in a 235,000 square foot building three years ago. We went from finding unlock doors routinely somewhere in the building to almost zero instances of unsecured doors over multiple years. In the process right now of a significant upgrade to our camera system but our old system at least covered exterior doors. We are able to address a unsecured door within minutes and go directly to the individual responsible to curb the behavior. First couple of years we had lot of door alarms, but that's gone down a lot. It was pretty good investment but not undoable. I cannot imagine having a school today that doesn't have those things in it regardless of school shooting situations. Key control and general security alone make the access control system well worth the investment. There shouldn't be a school that doesn't have good security camera system particularly a high school.

Who are you paying to monitor the cameras?