Part of a Series on Safety and Security
Once, schools were considered a safe haven where caring teachers taught and children learned. Even when circumstances in the world outside were chaotic, schools were a safe place. However, the world has changed. We can no longer take school safety for granted.
Schools are responding to today’s safety and security challenges. However, school officials must balance the need to make students feel welcome and safe while also adding measures to ensure a safe environment. These measures include investments in communication strategies, comprehensive school safety plans and improved maintenance of technology.
Like most areas of our lives today, technology can help, but only if you know what works best for you. If you have not conducted a risk assessment regarding emergencies, you should consider doing so as soon as possible.
A comprehensive school safety solution should include 6 essential elements:
- Reliable cellular coverage across the entire campus
- Mass notification capability
- Video surveillance
- Access control
- Intrusion detection
- Emergency phones – typically seen on college campuses.
Webinar: School Safety – Experts in Creating a Safer Community
Listen to the KTS recorded webinar: School Safety: Experts in Creating a Safer Community or download the PowerPoint slides to share with your administration. We are here to help you close the gaps to protect your school community.
Cell phones now play a major part in school safety. Most campuses are using automatically generated text alerts that get sent to teachers, students, and parents in the event of an emergency. As disruptive as cellphones in a classroom can be, they are an integral part of increasing school security and the fastest way to issue a mass warning; but only if the cell coverage reaches all areas of your campus. Dead zones need to be eliminated if so that reaching everyone on campus is possible. Cellular Bi-directional Amplifiers (BDAs) are a practical and inexpensive solution to ensure cell coverage to every corner of the campus.
In addition to mass notification via text, mass notification via loud speaker is an added method to guarantee that everyone is reachable in an emergency. Knowing that your student body knows where to go and what to do as quickly as possible in an emergency will give you and your student body (and their parents) enormous peace of mind
Emergency mass notifications are hopefully rare, but video surveillance and access control are day-to-day security features. Small changes can greatly improve school safety. Converting less frequently used doors into emergency exits only and funneling all student and visitor traffic through one or two well-monitored entry points can make it more difficult for unauthorized people to gain entry into a school building. Monitored video cameras at these entrances and at all exits ensure that all areas of the school are in view and that there is a record of everyone gaining access to the building. Installing a simple key card access control system is another reasonable and relatively inexpensive ways to improve school security making sure that only those who should have access to the building – or certain areas of it – are accessing it via their key cards.
These steps along with a plan to make all security features standard in all areas of the campus will go a long way toward ensuring the safety and security of students and staff. Above all, schools need to be safe, secure places where students can learn.
If you need to review or upgrade your campus security infrastructure, contact us.
