Sonitrol Great Lakes campus security expert shares best practices
Controlling how visitors and staff gain access to school buildings is a smart and sound starting point to help ensure a more secure campus environment.
Clay Crost, Director – Education Market at Sonitrol Great Lakes shares some of the first-hand observations he’s made when visiting schools for a security consultation and offers some best practices for educators to follow.
“First and foremost,” Crost says, “I ask how visitors are entering the building. Do they come in at one particular entrance, and is that entrance secured? How are they directing visitors into the building? Maybe they walk into a locked vestibule. Do they go right into the office or are they buzzed in? One of the challenges schools have is that when many of them were built, they did not have secure entrances, and we’re starting to see a lot of investment being made for reconfiguring how school offices are situated and built.”
“So, the best practice would be to install an intercom system on the outside of the building,” Crost suggests. “Some schools believe it’s better to get the visitors out of the outdoor elements and into the vestibule. But, now they’re in your building, whether it’s a secured vestibule or not. Another best practice is to identify the person before allowing them into the building – who they are and why are they there?”
Crost also quizzes school officials with: “How is your staff getting in? Do you want to make it so convenient that you have five entrances so that staff members can come and go easily? That is a bad idea. I like to limit where staff are going to come into the building from parking areas and places like that. The fewer entrances that you have people coming and going, the safer and easier it is to control and monitor those areas. If you have multiple parking lots, you need to have card readers placed at those entrances. At the same time, you want to limit access as much as you can given the architecture and construction of the campus.”
Access control during outdoor activities is another important issue, according to Crost. “How do you get students enrolled in gym classes, or kids in the playgrounds in and out of the buildings? Do you leave a door unlocked, or do you have staff propping doors open?” Crost recommends schools install and use an access control system “to take away a reason to prop a door open.”
As for those after-hours and weekend activities, Crost is a believer in extending strong access control to those areas. “With today’s technology, access control systems can be programmed to operate differently on weekends and evenings. You can limit entry points, so that on evenings and weekends staff and visitors should park in a designated area and come in through a designated door. Limiting after-hours entrance to one particular entryway is another safe, sound practice.”
Crost adds that many school districts, through grants, bond issues, and other means, are investing money to reconfigure their school building entrances and floor plans in the interest of greater student, staff, and visitor security.
Sonitrol Great Lakes has been protecting schools across the region for more than 50 years. Contact us to learn more and to schedule a no-obligation security consultation.
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