Schools build for a safer future
Design work emphasizes security after shootings
Visitors who approach Rolling Knolls Elementary School in Annapolis are scrutinized by about 20 security cameras. Those and 60 more inside provide live feeds to the school office, centralized school security and Anne Arundel County police and fire officials.
Each outside door to the school is locked and controlled remotely. At the school entrance, visitors are asked to stand in front of a camera and speak into an intercom. Office staff are trained to ask their names and their reasons for visiting. Staff may then unlock a door to a vestibule, where the visitors encounter more locked doors, to the office and to the school.
In the office, staff ask visitors for identification, to be checked against databases. Classroom doors have locks, and the hallways are designed to be clear of obstructions, so administrators can stand at an intersection and see clearly in several directions.
Rolling Knolls, which opened in 2014, follows a security model that Anne Arundel County is replicating in all of its schools.
“We want to make our investments on the front end to preclude you from ever even getting into the building, or getting past the main front office,” said Alex Szachnowicz, the school system’s chief operating officer. “Every parent that sends a child to school deserves and should be assured that we’re going to deliver that child back home each and