Campus Safety Needed In Our Schools

03/03/2006

Paul Munnis

With all the smoke being blown about concerning spying, lack of government capability to manage disaster, the problems before, during, and after the last hurricane season, the poor management of government facilities, lost government assets, and a host of other national security issues, a key point is being lost.

Our kids are not safe enough today on school grounds. Having visitors sign-in and out at the office is not good enough security.

When parents wave good-by to their kids in the morning and the children enter school. Any number of bad things can befall them.

We can think back to the attack on Russian children by terrorists and the gunning down of a whole school yard by terrorists. That can happen here too.

Is there a calendar quarter that passes without stories of classmates going bonkers and killing their classmates?

Then there are rogue teachers, janitors, bus-drivers, and even delivery people who commit sin against our kids.

It isn’t as though a big government program is needed. With just a little imagination we can purchase metal detectors, install security cameras and man them during hours of student movement We can lock the doors during school hours, and install fire alarm overrides that will automatically unlock the doors in an emergency. A badge control access system is not unreasonable to aspire to either. Many doors are already set up to open outwards for fire but cannot be opened from the outside because they are locked and those not that way can be retrofitted.

Random student locker inspections would cost very little to implement and may reduce the storage of contraband such as guns, ammo, knives, box-cutters, and clubs. No reasonable police chief would refuse a request to run such a random check program and grant money may existto implement it.

For a few bucks we can get a remote monitoring service to monitor the camera and alarms if we can’t get school personnell to do so. There may be people in need of temporary jobs in our communities to whom this could be outsourced using Internet web-cam monitoring. A web-cam costs $29.95 and can be attached to the existing Internet cable for abut $30 worth of software. Motion detection software is included at those prices too. As funds permit the cameras can be upgraded to include features for pan, tilt, and zoom.

Placing large rocks in a perimeter around the school makes it hard to get vehicles close to the buildings in order to blow them up.

If we do a little of this improved security every year, why in just five years our kids will be a heck of a lot safer and it won’t require the national debt be run up any higher nor will it mean ceding the safety of our kids to the Feds or to State officials.

School and Parent / Teacher organizations can get together to create a plan, cost it out, and plan local fund raisers to make it happen. $800 per pancake breakfast can sure add up over the years and get the needed equipment.

We are insuring ourselves against mental illness directed against our kids as well as overt terrorist acts when we take these actions. In fact, the mental illness aspect is the more immediate and daily threat. 

As long as the school system is being presented with solutions and citizens are not creating more problems then the administrators will likely accept improved security solutions. After all, they spend their day on the facility grounds all day long too. The key is collaborative planning.

Big community gains come from those sorts of simple baby steps. A sense of community can go a long way to resolve school securiy exposures and to achieve gains that or State and Federal lawmakers can’t even hope for. College and Universties need the same campus protections that public schools need while Day Care providers need to think about protection for tots too. If we did this as a community then we would be a lot safer from child molesters, sexual predators, and child assault arising from school bullying too. Why leave our kids exposed to such things? Why ask that government fix everything? Why not act to help ourselves and our loved ones?