The way I envision a school safety audit to be conducted is to start from the property boundary and you walk into the building.

It is very important that the property line be well defined. A visitor should know where the public property ends and school property starts. The visitor should understand that he or she is entering school property and that their behavior has to change to follow school guidelines and what is expected of them, such as no guns, no alcohol, etc. School principals should also be aware of school property boundaries so that they may enforce school policies.

Signs should be clearly and boldly placed. This will reinforce to visitors that they are now on school property. Directional signs for visitors' parking and entrance door should be in place. The other thing we recommend is that all schools have "no trespassing" signs referring to the appropriate zoning ordinance. This will make it easier for local law enforcement to apprehend people who are on school property after hours and without permission.

What we've seen and recommended is basically that once the students are inside the building, there should be what we call "designated points of entry." That means all of the doors should be locked from the outside and visitors, vendors or repairmen should be required to come to certain specified locations. That way, you can control who is getting into your building. You could issue them a visitor's badge or check their IDs before you let them inside.

It is important that visitors be greeted by a receptionist in the office or a volunteer parent at a desk where the sign-in sheets are located and visitors' badges are issued. The school people should be trained to engage visitors in casual conversation and greet them before issuing a badge. This will indicate to the person whether the visitor is irate or upset, etc.

You mention lighting and types of fixtures in your audit. Are there certain types of fixtures or areas where a wall-mounted fixture will be better than a pole-mounted fixture?

On the building exterior, wall mounted fixtures with vandal-resistant lens covers work better. Lamp poles are not desirable close to the building wall as they may provide a means to access the roof or upper windows. Lamp poles are more suitable for parking areas, play areas and driveways. Light fixtures, whether wall-mounted or pole-mounted should be designed end spaced to provide uniform lighting at all times.

Some of the synthetic materials that look like stucco may not be the best material for the lower parts of walls in a school environment. You may want to use them at a higher level where students cannot reach them because they can be damaged easily. Typically, and I'm not saying that's the only material that can be used, but brick and mortar, or concrete blocks, have stood the test of time well.

In terms of windows, it's not that one type of window is better than the other, but one has to keep in mind issues such as maintenance, energy savings and life of the windows. For instance, in a certain location maybe vandal-resistant glazing may be necessary. Nowadays, the trend in window frames is more toward vinyl-covered frames or aluminum extruded frames. One has to be aware of what type of window they are, their condition and type of hardware.

If there are operable windows, for example, are they kept open when the weather is warm? Is the hardware operational or damaged? Can these windows be locked afterwards? Are these operable windows checked every evening to see that no one has placed a piece of wood or something that will prevent the window from closing and provide access at night?

For example, you wouldn't want too much glazing on the rear doors of the gymnasium and cafeteria for reasons of security. You would prefer them to be solid. Entrance doors typically have a lot of glazing so that you can see visitors approaching.

All required exit doors should have panic hardware. Doors that are not designated points of entry into the building should not have operable hardware on the exterior. Hinges on all exterior doors should have hidden pins that cannot be removed from the outside. Double doors should be the type where one door closes before the other and the second door has a metal plate that covers the space between the two doors. This will prevent vandals from tampering with the locking mechanism. Similarly, in the case of single leaf exterior doors, there should be a metal plate that covers the space between the door and the jamb.

All exterior doors need not provide access into the building. However, before hardware on a door is modified or changed, we recommend that the local fire marshal and building code officials be contacted.

That's something that depends on what investment the school district wants to make. The card access door definitely will allow access only to those permitted to enter the area, and that's a good way of controlling access. But that does not necessarily prevent, lets say, tampering with the door to get in. One of the things that we recommend is that the far-away exterior doors should be tied into the central alarm system so that if anyone pries it open, there is a break in contact that will set off an alarm.

We don't evaluate systems. That's one thing we don't do. We don't compare one system vs. the other. But, for example, most schools in Virginia, to my knowledge, are on a key system.

What we recommend is that there should be key control. There should be a master key system and there should be a category of keys. For example, a teacher who is in a science lab does not necessarily need access to the vocational wing. But the custodian or the principal should have a key that opens every door in the building. It is also critical to keep track of who has been assigned keys and make sure that they are returned at the end of the school year.

Some of it is required, like fire controls, by code where they should be located. But if we're talking about burglar alarm systems, they should be located in the main office areas, libraries, computer labs, science labs, vocational shops, cafeteria and other areas that may be a burglar's target.

All classrooms should have a two-way communication system between the main office and the classrooms. The older buildings have a one-way buzzer into the main of office. But most schools are moving away from that now and to telephones in the classroom.

Another system is a hand-held device that the teacher carries and in case of an emergency can pull the pin out.

Alarm controls should be located in easily accessible areas that are also easy to supervise so students do not fool with the system.

The weather system is different. We're working on a project here in Virginia, hopefully if everything goes well, we might supply all-weather radios to all schools. Some schools already have them but some may not, and we want to make sure every school has them. They would be in, lets say, the principal's of office or the secretary's office. It would go off only when there's an alarm for that area where the school is located.

Typically what I've seen is they're placed in the assistant principal's office or near the secretary. In new schools which have security personnel, they're placed in a kind of console arrangement where the security personnel are seated, close to the main entrance.

One of the things that we'd like to see that we haven't seen is the monitors, where you watch entrances and different locations on camera, in a very public place where the students could see what's going on in different parts of the building. We have discussed this informally with designers, and of course we're not the designers of the system, so we can't implement it. But if you enter the main lobby or the main cafeteria or maybe even near the cafeteria, you could have a wall with a bank of monitors—that would send a message to the students who may have been contemplating doing something wrong: they can be seen, can be watched, and that would be a preventive measure.

Classroom doors are fire-rated, and by the fire code you can have a maximum size of an opening in the door for a vision panel. Now that schools have sprinkler systems, larger vision panels may be possible on the doors, or you could have a side view panel. We recommend that because its a good safety measure. It allows people walking down the hallways to see what's going on in the classroom, but it also allows the classroom teachers to watch what's going on in the hallways.

Typically classroom doors are located every 30 to 35 feet from each ocher. If these doors or the classrooms were staggered on both sides of the hallway, and each door had a vision panel that was left open—teachers tend to put posters and paper there because they feel they are being watched, but we encourage that they are left uncovered—that would allow two way vision.

..

Are there any security system configurations that your audit tends to uncover as being ineffective?

 

One thing we have observed is where the monitors are, for example, at the office of

the assistant principal. If he's away from his desk, who watches the monitor? Is there a

backup?

 

The other thing is, if you have cameras on the exterior of the building, they should be

powerful enough so that you can zoom into areas or maybe be able to read the license

plate of a parked car in the student lot and check if it is authorized or not. Or if you see

a couple students loitering around, and you have the feeling they are engaged in

some fishy business, you can zoom in and see what is actually going on. A good example

that we saw in Virginia was where a convenience store was across from a high school.

They could pan their camera onto that store and see if any students were violating

school code. Not only that, local police also use the camera to see what is going on at

that convenience store. In fact, that's how local law enforcement dismantled some gang

activity that was gearing up in that area

Your audit also studies lockers and locker placement

 

The traditional way has been lockers on one or both sides of the hallways. If you look

at a high school or middle school and change of class time, it's a real chaotic situation

that inevitably results in some pushing and shoving.

One alternative is to place lockers in designated locker bay areas, or open locker alcoves off the hallways. The lockers should not be more than maybe 4 feet to a maximum of 5 feet in height so that teachers on hall duty can look across the locker bay and see what's going on.

Traditionally lockers in gymnasium locker rooms have perforated doors for ventilation and hallway lockers have solid doors. What would be ideal is to have see-through or perforated locker doors in the halhway as well. This would permit staff to see what is stored inside the lockers and deter storing of illegal material such as tobacco, guns, knives, etc. I have discussed this with some locker manufacturers, but the push for change in locker design has to come from school administrators.

Typically the traditional cafeteria seating does not seem designed for students. It's designed for ease of maintenance. They're made of good materials, but you get the feeling not of an educational institution but a penal institution. At home they eat at the dining table. Maybe five or six people in the family sit around the table and have a meal. Why is it that when they come to school we have 16 or more people around the table and expect the to be quiet? The way it's designed and the way they're grouped sort of invites potential problems.

Acoustics is one major problem. I think designers should pay special attention to that. Drop-in ceilings do not take care of the noise level. Most of the school cafeterias, it's almost like a fish market the noise level is so high. We should have better acoustical treatment of this area like they do in gymnasiums with perforated block or acoustical panels.