Ways To Immediately Improve Safety At Your School

In today's world, school safety is a concern in the biggest cities and the smallest towns. As you have undoubtedly seen over the years, acts of horrific violence can take place anywhere at any time. To guard against becoming the next school that deals with violence, you may be looking at various options to make your school safer. To see immediate results, here are some steps you can take right away.

Have a Secure Perimeter

Once you secure your school's perimeter, you instantly make it harder for an act of violence to occur on campus. To accomplish this, you can have security fencing and gates installed. Along with this, have areas specifically designated for loading and unloading students, which will help ensure no unauthorized individuals get on campus.

Limit Access Points

Since your school has many people coming and going each day, it is important that you limit access points and have them monitored as much as possible. School security doors can help make this easier since they are reinforced to provide maximum strength against those who may try to break into your school.

Two-Way Communication

In your school, it is crucial that teachers, staff, administrators, and others be able to instantly communicate with the security office. Two-way communication systems such as microphones, speakers, and two-way radios or walkie-talkies can be a quick way to give everyone the ability to stay in touch with one another and quickly get help should the need arise. If possible, you may also want to consider installing panic buttons in classrooms, since these can be accessed quickly to alert first responders to a crisis.

Have a School Crisis Plan

Even though you hope the time never comes when your school will face violence, it is critical that you have a crisis plan in place that can be implemented at a moment's notice. This should include how to handle lockdowns and evacuations, procedures teachers and students should take to barricade classrooms, and what actions should be taken when dealing with armed intruders or hostage situations.

Hire Security Guards

Finally, hiring school security guards to patrol school grounds can be an instant deterrent to those who may be contemplating committing an act of violence at your school. Even though police can be on the scene in minutes, having security guards on-site who can thwart or slow down violent acts until help arrives can save many lives.

Once you implement these school safety options on your campus, you and everyone else will gain immediate peace of mind. Bring these tips up to your school board and they will understand your concerns and maybe implement one or all of these ideas.