SonOfScubaDiver said:
The schools need to be hardened up. For example, this latest shooter manage to get all these kids out in the hallways by pulling the fire alarm. Why, in this day and of electronic everything, are schools still relying on such an outdated way of detecting fires?
Fire alarms aren't for detecting fires, they are for activating alarms. Manual pull station alarms may be a requirement in Florida's building and/or fire codes. My state requires them for certain occupancies -- I'd have to research whether or not that includes schools.
Also, doors leading into classrooms need to be hardened and made to automatically close and lock at the push of a button.
Conflicting criteria. I've worked on schools, including specifying the door hardware. Your front door lock probably uses a key from the outside, and a button that you push in and turn (a "thumbturn") from the inside. This type of lock is cleverly called an "Entrance function" lockset. No good in schools, because that would allow the kids to lock the teacher out of his/her own classroom if the teacher happened to step out into the hall.
Going back many years, there was (and still is) a lock function called "Classroom." A "Classroom" function lock has nothing on the inside knob (or lever, today), and a key tumbler on the outside. The door is always able to be opened from the inside, even when locked (fire codes again). It can only be locked or unlocked from the outside, using a key.
And that's where things stood for decades ... until Columbine. Suddenly people awoke to the security issues of a shooter in the school. The traditional classroom lock required the teacher to step out in the corridor in order to lock the door if a lockdown was called for. So the lock manufacturers came up with a new design, called a "Classroom Security Function" lockset. Same as the old classroom locks,
except for the addition of a key tumbler on the inside. With this new Classroom Security Function lock, the teacher can lock the door without needing to enter the corridor and expose him/herself to gunfire.
Following on that, for the schools that can afford it, the lock makers have come up with integrated, electronic, remote control systems whereby all classroom doors can be locked by a signal from the central office. Nice systems, but VERY pricey, and prohibitively expensive to be considered for retrofit in existing schools due to the cost of running the wiring on top of the cost of the hardware itself.
Schools built today are probably a mix between the Classroom Security Function manual locks, and the remote electronic systems. But there are a LOT of existing schools that I'll bet still have the older Classroom Function locks on the classroom doors.