Luckily, school districts have a number of options for increasing safety and reducing risk in school buildings and on campuses. Bear in mind, though, that every district is unique, so there is no single correct solution to school security needs. For that reason, each
district should be thoroughly assessed and evaluated to develop the solutions that best suit its needs.

All too often, the term school security evokes images of access-control keypads or card readers, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, security guards, and fences. All these approaches are viable solutions to specific concerns. Without first identifying objectives and priorities, however, a district runs the risk of adopting the wrong approach. The result of adopting the wrong approach could be a waste of resources—or, worse yet, failure to safeguard the very people and property it was intended to protect.

By conducting a comprehensive security assessment of your facilities, your school district can complete a systematic and methodical process that not only identifies objectives and priorities for your security program, but also develops a well-defined plan for implementing the program, training the staff, and educating the public.

Analyzing operations

A key step in the assessment is an audit of the district’s current security operations. This audit should include extensive interviews with people at all levels who have a role in security, including administrators, teachers, support staff, security staff, and students. Each of these groups brings a different perspective on the types of security problems encountered at school. They may also have varied ideas on which existing procedures are enforced well, which are ineffective, and what can be done to improve current procedures. Understanding these different viewpoints is a big step toward closing gaps in your security plan.

The interviews should address such issues as current procedures for employee access, visitor sign-in and sign-out processes, after-hours access, deliveries, student intake and dismissal, and parking practices, to name just a few.

The audit should also include a thorough review of any existing district safety plans and crisis management/response plans. Many states mandate such plans and require that they be revised and updated annually. In other states, the plans are optional or nonexistent.

Other district documents—such as faculty handbooks, student codes of conduct, and school board policies on safety and security—should be coordinated with each other and with the safety and crisis plans to make sure they are accurate and complete. The in-depth review of all these documents should consider continuity of operation, incident command/response, and application at both the building and district levels.

Evaluating physical facilities

One of the most essential components of any comprehensive security assessment is an on-site evaluation of each building and its surrounding site. The evaluation should begin with actual observation of the district’s operational procedures: Are they implemented and enforced in accordance with district guidelines? Are there gaps in coverage of essential processes?

An approach known as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED, can help identify how the architectural features of a building and site can be applied as part of a comprehensive security solution.

CPTED consists of three essential elements:

• Natural access control. This can be as simple as clearly defining entranceways and other points of access to a site or building. It can also include designing landscapes that allow clear and
  unobstructed views of surrounding areas.

• Natural surveillance. Good examples are placement of windows overlooking parking areas, improving visibility with lighting or transparent building materials, and eliminating “blind” sight areas where someone could be entrapped or attacked. Creation of clear sight lines in multiple directions also increases natural surveillance.

• Territorial reinforcement. The borders of the site must be clearly delineated. In many cases this can be accomplished with ornamental fencing or landscaping with appropriate barrier plants to
  control traffic access.

In evaluating facilities, many people focus on physical security systems for access control, intrusion detection, camera surveillance, and the like. Many districts use such systems—often without first conducting a comprehensive security assessment. When that is the case, the school staff may not fully understand why the systems have been installed. Any report from a physical site evaluation should offer clear and definitive observations of existing conditions, outline any deficiencies in the environment being observed, and offer recommendations for corrective measures.

Training the staff

An important but often overlooked element of the assessment is staff development. A well-developed plan on paper is only as good as the people whose task it is to carry it out.

Staff development should begin with conflict resolution, personal safety, and anger management. Many potentially violent incidents can be defused by well-trained staff members. Additionally, the staff should be drilled on the district’s crisis management and response plans and on proper coordination with local law enforcement agencies and emergency first responders. Staff members can play essential roles in a crisis and must be prepared to act when called upon.

In addition to drills, tabletop exercises allow people responsible for incident command and those in similar leadership roles to gather and walk through specific types of incidents, step by step, to better understand each other’s responsibilities.

The federal government has developed training courses for public entities responsible for emergency response. School leaders charged with making command decisions during a crisis should consider taking these courses. The Federal Emergency Management Agency offers standard curriculums in the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System. In many cases, the coursework is offered in conjunction with local fire departments, municipalities, and counties. (For more information, visit www.fema.gov.)

Reaching out to the community

Community support is critical to the success of your security program. A good way to garner
support is to involve students, parents, local business leaders, and other community representatives in the planning process. By including these groups, you can help identify effective procedures, explain the capabilities of new physical security systems, and let people know what you expect them to do should
a crisis occur.

Community involvement should be limited to developmental and conceptual input for the plan, however. To protect the integrity of the plan itself, strategic details and specific steps should not be shared publicly.

We live in a different world today than we did just 10 or 20 years ago. Security systems and
procedures continue to evolve to meet changing needs. We need to remember that a comprehensive security assessment is not a one-time process. It must be revisited and re-evaluated regularly to ensure
compliance and make changes as required.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil,” Sir Edmund Burke once said, “is that good men do nothing.” We owe it to our students to be the kind of good men and women who do something—to be vigilant and proactive in protecting them.

Russell W. Riddell is associate principal and director of school security planning and design services for The Thomas Group, a Tetra-Tech company in Ithaca, N.Y. He can be reached at rwr@thethomasgroup.com.