SonOfScubaDiver said:
Aguila, I wasn't talking about pushing a button on the handle to lock the door. I was talking about a button that would be pushed from the office that would tell all the doors to close and lock. Something like a magnetic system that would hold the doors open and then release them to close and lock them once that button was pushed.
They've had such systems for close to twenty years. I've been out of the game for more than ten years, but my guess would be that all or most NEW schools are built with such systems. The fly in the ointment is that the majority of schools in this country aren't schools that were built in the last ten to fifteen years, they're a lot older. And it costs big money to retrofit an old building with a fancy electronic, remote control locking system like that. The school districts that are probably the most in need of such systems are also those that are probably the least likely to be able to pay for them.
But a lot can be done by simply eliminating stupidity -- or outflanking it. A couple of "war" stories may illustrate my point:
1. Sandy Hook. That school had a new security system that had just gone on-line shortly before the shooting. Basically, the doors were locked during the school day, and visitors had to press a button and be buzzed in by someone in the main office. Good. Except -- the doors were glass, and beside the doors were floor-to-ceiling height glass sidelights. The shooter arrived, didn't get buzzed in, so he did what any self-respecting shooter would do and blew out the glass so he could walk in.
2. Neighboring town to me: Right after sandy Hook, the town next to mine announced that they were installing a new security system in their grammar school. I was curious, and I knew the building official, so I asked what the new system was. Scout's honor - it was
exactly the same as the system that had failed at Sandy Hook. And the school in question also had glass doors and sidelights.
3. The parochial high school my daughter attended for awhile had opaque (solid) entrance doors with no glass in the doors and no sidelights. Cool -- no way to shoot your way in, you'd need explosives. Doors were locked during the school day. One door had a doorbell that visitors could ring to be admitted. Remember I said the doors were opaque? That means whoever was inside couldn't see who was ringing the doorbell. The buzzer was in the main office, which was some distance remote from the entrance doors and didn't have direct line of sight. When the doorbell rang, whoever in the office was nearest to the buzzer just pressed it and released the door -- no way to identify who was out there, and no attempts made to do so.
4. The public high school in my town did a renovation and addition project about a decade ago. I did the plan review for the final construction documents on behalf of the town. Not a code violation, but I commented that since they (the building committee) had expressed a specific desire to institute measures to protect against a Columbine-like incident, they had done some dumb things. Such as (a) the entrance doors were all glass and had huge glass sidelights. (Just like Sandy Hook, but this was a few years before the Sandy Hook shooting.) (b) In the new wings, the
classrooms had glass sidelights. When I pointed out how vulnerable these were to attack, the architect's response was, "But we like them." So they built the school with the glass sidelights. (c) They installed the new "Classroom Security Function" locks on the new classroom doors -- but they left the old classroom doors with the old Classroom Function locks that require the teacher to step into the corridor to lock the door. Bad enough -- but then I asked if they had any "floating" teachers -- such as an art, music, or specialty instructor who didn't have a dedicated classroom but instead "floated" from classroom to classroom. Yes, they did. I asked if the "floaters" were given the key to each classroom in which they taught. Answr: "Um, er, ah, ____." Okay, what about substitute teachers -- do they get the key to whatever classroom they'll be assigned to? No, the custodial staff opens the door in the morning, and the teacher teaches. I asked what the substitute is supposed to do if there's a call for a lockdown. Answer: "Um, er, ah, ___."
So one thing that I believe should be done is what the U.S. government already does with secure installations: Hire professional mercenaries to figure out how to beat the security system. How did the Florida shooter get into a supposedly secure building? He WALKED IN. He knew that they unlocked the gates twenty minutes before dismisal, so he waited until twenty minutes before dismissal and then waltzed right in, unchallenged and unopposed.
The Florida school was a multi-building campus with a student population of over 3,000. That's larger than many towns in my state. The school had ONE school resource officer (who may or may not have even been on the campus that day, but that's a separate question). Based on national ratios of police-to-population, the school probably should have had four or five SROs. But the school didn't want to pay for five full-time cops, and the Sheriff's office doesn't have the staff or the budget to assign five deputies to one school if the school board doesn't pay for it, so they got one -- or maybe none that day.
Aside from the necessary but difficult discussion about mental health, if we want to make our schools safer (note that I said "safer," not "safe"), we need to demand that the people in charge of them THINK about their security. The plan needs to be multi-level, multi-pronged ... and then it needs to be submitted to objective outsiders like me, whose job will be to ask the embarrassing questions like, "Do the substitutes have the key to the door?"
:doh:
Somebody needs to do more than just specify the latest hardware gadgets and think the job is done. That's barely even a start. What's important is how the system actually responds in the event of a bomb threat ... an actual explosion ... an active shooter ...
multiple active shooters ... or [___]. Murphy's law is always in effect. You have all the newest bells and whistles -- now, what can possibly go wrong with your fancy new system? Good ... now, what else?
