Schools tighten security

Single points of entry keep intruders out, but some still in design phase

“You have to realize that if someone with ill intent wants to get in, there are many other doors.” Ken Trump, National School Safety and Security Services

After watching 17 students and teachers die in Parkland, schools across South Florida are trying to make sure there’s only one way to get into a building.

But that doesn’t mean students will be totally safe.

Even Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had a single entry point for the public, but the school’s security staff had opened side gates early so students could get to their cars when school let out. That allowed the shooter to enter the campus.

Superintendents in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties announced after the massacre that they planned to scrutinize every aspect of school security to make their campuses safer. Broward reported that 55 school campuses — out of 230 — don’t have single points of entry. Although the district plans to install them on every

campus, many of these projects are still in the design phase and won’t be done by the start of school.

To boost security, the school district says it has expedited the placement of fences, gates and barriers around school perimeters at its schools.

In Palm Beach County, most of the district’s 185 schools will have these limited entry points by the time school starts in August, said Wanda Paul, the school district’s chief of facilities. Four middle schools and 12 elementary schools are getting the altered entry points this summer, paid for with money from a sales tax approved by voters in 2016.

In addition, some schools will get new fences, while others will benefit from improved lighting.

With single point of entry, visitors will be directed through the main office and won’t have access to alternative passageways, such as a bus loop entryway or cafeteria door. Some newer schools were designed with this protection and have only one entry point, while many schools built before the 1990s are spread across many acres and still have several access points.

“The goal is a single point of entry at every school,” Paul said. “We had already been moving toward that, even before Marjory Stoneman Douglas.”Although many parents have pressured school districts to install improved security systems since the massacre, security experts say they should not believe a single entry point solves all security challenges.

“You have to realize that if someone with ill intent wants to get in, there are many other doors,” said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services.

In addition, Trump said office personnel need to undergo extensive training on whom to let into the building through the single point of entry, which usually includes a buzzer and a camera that shows the office staff who is approaching.

Palm Beach County school board member Karen Brill said the district must retrain students and staff to be careful about allowing people they don’t know on to campus.