School security is always something Superintendent Bob Gates, Carbon County School District #2 Board of Directors and principals talk about, but events like the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut put the conversation front and center.
The challenge is to put some practical procedures in place without creating a logistical nightmare. Short of turning them into a prison and drastically restructuring students’ educational experience, there is no way to make schools completely safe.
“We’re going to the extreme,” Larry Hepner, district facility manager, said. “That’s the nature of the beast when something like this happens, but the bottom line is you have to be prudent.”
School security in the district is minimal compared with some areas of the country, partly because of the low crime rate and low population.
“Part of the advantage of living in a small town is people know everybody ... but times are changing even in little rural towns,” Gates said.
The district spent $200,000 on security cameras last year and already has a policy of keeping all inside doors locked. Now, the district plans to lock the front doors too.
In fact, all schools in the state’s 49 districts will have their front doors locked by the fall of 2013, Gates said.
Any district employees working in school buildings during the school day will be required to wear an id badge and any district employee can call a lockdown if they see something suspicious.
To make the lockdowns run efficiently Gates and the principals want teachers to come up with action plans for the first 30 seconds of a lockdown.
“All the kids will have a job,” Gates said, “making sure the doors are locked and barricaded and the windows are shut. We’re hoping within a minute or so the whole building will be shut down.”
Schools in Wyoming have to do at least four fire drills during the school year, but with lockdowns a more likely occurrence than fires, Gates wants at least four lockdown drills per school per year as well.
The district will have to have some sort of monitoring system for the front doors, which will be locked except for the periods in the morning, lunch and afternoon when kids are coming and going.
In most of the schools, the front doors are not visible from the main office and the district is looking at options to relocate offices where feasible to get them in line of sight of the doors.
Funding for the reconstruction could be problematic though.
With their goal of smaller, more efficient buildings, the School Facilities Department (SFD) in Cheyenne may not be supportive if it means added square footage, but Hepner said SFD might be more flexible if the reason is security.
Hepner said the door locking mechanisms will range from $3,000 to $5,000 per door.
Gates said he has not received any calls from parents asking about security policies, but feels some procedures need to be put in place.
“If I have a parent tell me ‘why didn’t you lock that door?’, I would have no reason,” Gates said. “There’s nothing you could say at that point.”
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