Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
S. FLORIDA SCHOOLS LOCK OUT VISITORS DURING DAY
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre has prompted another new restriction for visitors to South Florida school campuses: locked entry gates for much of the school day.
The restricted entry system, which requires a visitor to call the front office to get permission to enter, is a new manifestation of schools’ emphasis on security after the Feb. 14 bloodshed in Parkland. Parents and other visitors used to be able to approach a school building with unlimited access or by ringing a buzzer at the front office.
Now, visitors to these schools must wait outside the front gate until a school monitor unlocks the entrance. Among the schools is Peters Elementary School in Plantation.
“In light of everything that happened last year in Broward County, we are implementing very stringent safety measures at Peters,” Principal Joyce Krzemienski wrote to parents. “Most notably, all of our perimeter gates will be locked from 8:10 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. This means no one will have access to the campus during the day unless you follow the new procedures that are outlined in the handbook.”
Visitors to Peters have to call ahead and tell the office they are on their way. A school staffer will open the gate after checking the visitors’ IDs and determining why they need to enter the school. The visitors then must park in a designated spot and enter the school office, where their IDs are checked again.
Some parents are expressing
concern about long waits to be approved and get into their children’s schools. Nathalie Lynch-Walsh, who has two children at Indian Ridge Middle School in Davie, said there are insufficient places to wait in the car outside Indian Ridge’s front gate. And she worries that the front office is too under-staffed to handle the many calls from people trying to enter.
“As anyone who has ever called the front office knows, you don’t get a person on the line 100 percent of the time,” she said. “You don’t understand how many people go in and out of schools for perfectly legitimate reasons: volunteers, staff members, social workers.”
Broward schools opened on Wednesday. Several new security features were installed across the district over the summer, including fences, double doors, and cameras. The school district is spending $26 million to create single points of entry at all its schools, with completion expected on all campuses by early 2019.
The full closures during the school day are a new Broward policy and a new security twist. Tracy Clark, Broward schools spokeswoman, said the restrictions are a strategy for ensuring student safety. Emergency vehicles will be allowed quick entry when they are needed, she said.
“Parents and visitors are welcome on school campuses,” Clark said. “We do need parents and community members to understand that we have safety and security protocols such as locked gates. There will be signs posted so parents/ visitors can call the front office to gain access if the front gate is locked.”
Indian Ridge is among the Broward schools that have a single point of entry, a new design feature that steers visitors to the front office. Although many doors are open for arrival and dismissal, there is only one way to get in during the school day at 135 of Broward’s 230 schools.
Palm Beach County schools allow principals to use their discretion in deciding when to lock up their campuses. At Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Principal William Latson posted Spanish River’s new restrictions on Twitter on the day school started, Aug. 13.
He said the school’s gates would be locked during lunch time and during class changes.
“We are doing this for the safety of our Sharks during the day! Students safety over visitor convenience, Priorities!”
In an interview on Thursday, Latson said he decided to close the gates after speaking to school security experts. They agreed that students are most vulnerable to strangers when they are outside en masse, such as during lunch or between classes.
Latson said he sat at the gate himself this week during lunchtime to explain the policy to approaching drivers. He said about a dozen cars tried to get in, a combination of parents, mail carriers and garbage truck drivers.
Spanish River parent Dawn Gaynor said she approves of the new policy.
“I have no problem with that. It should be locked down,” said Gaynor, whose son is in 10th grade. “It’s so chaotic during lunch, you can’t tell who’s wandering on to campus.”
But some see the locked gates as an impediment. Rebecca Dahl, a volunteer at C. Robert Markham Elementary School in Pompano Beach, said she expects to make fewer visits to the school.
“I used to be able to just drop by, to drop things off or ask a question,” said Dahl, who has volunteered at Markham for three years. “The front office is quite a distance away from the gate. I don’t want to take time away from the school staff.”