Is your administration doing everything possible to create a safer school community for its students, staff, and guests?
It’s a sobering question and one that so many school officials are struggling with every day.
The good news is that with the help of a qualified security specialist, there are multiple ways to achieve a safer campus and provide better peace of mind for everyone involved.
Here are 10 action items your team can implement today to create a safer school community:
- Talk to your security team about a layered approach: “Creating layers of security” is another way of saying “cover all bases.” Emergencies and crisis situations occur without warning. What happens when one of your security systems goes offline at the worst possible time? By collaborating with a professional and trustworthy security vendor, you can effectively layer school safeguards and ensure that if and when one system fails, another is always present to take its place.
- Protect your entry points: State-of-the-art access control systems are imperative, of course. But one critical security component that often flies under the radar is the importance of simple door prop alarms. Far too many crises could have been averted with this easily installed tech. Programmable alarms alert authorized personnel whenever a door has been left open longer than a specified timeframe, reducing the risk of intrusion.
- Identify visitors: Visitor entry systems can help you know who is coming and going from your school while cutting-edge biometric technology can be programmed to admit or decline guests, visitors, students, staff, and more based on authorization level.
- Identify vehicles: License plate recognition software allows school faculty to access and review identifying numbers for all vehicles entering and existing school property.
- Identify weapons: Talk to your security specialist about integrating AI with your school’s existing surveillance and video analytics systems to detect weapons on-site in real-time.
- Detect and defend against firearms: Gunshot detection solutions can recognize and record gunfire at or nearby your school and automatically alert law enforcement, while bullet-resistant windows and other bullet-proofing safeguards can protect your school not only from gunfire, but also from shattered windows, attempted break-ins, and much more.
- Keep communication flowing: Mass communication solutions allow your team to notify staff and students of threats immediately and provide a proper course of action whenever possible.
- Eliminate “ease of use” hurdles: In an emergency, time is of the essence, and preventable frustrations can cause debilitating delays. Alarms and panic buttons should be installed where they are easily reached and accessed by faculty, and all systems should be intuitive and one-touch wherever and whenever possible. Likewise, security measures should be accessible via a user-intuitive interface that allows authorized personnel to initiate multiple protocols – including lockdowns – from any Internet-connected device from any location.
- Implement state-of-the-art surveillance: Today’s cloud-based surveillance systems give staff and authorities the ability to review footage remotely or on-site, which could expedite campus searches for shooters or other threats. Discuss implementation with your security vendor.
- Schedule a free vulnerability site assessment. Identifying potential weaknesses within your organization and implementing corrective measures to mitigate them is imperative to protect your visitors, team members, guests, and more. Secom provides assessments free of charge for schools seeking a comprehensive security approach.
Secom can help you create a safer school community. Reach out to us today to learn more and schedule a visit.