TexasCHLforum.com

Perhaps I can shed some light on the topic of school security; I work IT in a small, rural school district (which I will not name for obvious reasons) and we've been making quite a few changes to accommodate for increased security and safety for the kids in the past few months.

Regarding the whole "Silent Alarm" idea - such a thing does exist. Our department has been working with a company called COPsync to integrate their product into our district technology plan for months now. The gist of their program is that each computer in a school (issued to Teaching or Administrative Staff) has a small unobtrusive program installed on it. This program basically runs in the task bar constantly, until needed. If a situation arises that requires immediate law enforcement presence, a user simply double clicks the icon, and an alert is sent out after a short delay (to make sure it is not actuated by accident). This alert is sent out to every Law Enforcement agency in our area - sheriffs department, local PD, DHS and all of it's alphabet cousins in an effort to get a better response, both in numbers of responding officers, and time.

So thankfully, the technology does exist, though not every ISD is going to implement it for whatever reason. I know that as far as how we have things setup, it's intended to provide another option to contact help as there are some plausible scenarios where a phone may not be a viable option to do so. I think this is a great idea personally, as I'm one of the few folks in the district that feels our security could use some massive bolstering. Thankfully we're headed in the correct direction. We do have a sheriff at each campus all the time to improve in response to a threat. Which is great...BUT, without getting into details, the entire district needs SERIOUS training regarding lockdown drills and emergency procedures for something like an active shooter scenario, the Sheriffs Dept included. We ran a drill some months back that had an abysmal outcome (in my view).I sincerely hope they've been training more - and likewise, the staff needs to be better trained, however the emphasis is simply not put on this need by our School Board or SI.

A close friend of mine who is a teacher has invited me to help create a presentation for the school board regarding our security protocols, and how despite the improvements we are making need to be much more far reaching with a lot more constant training. School Marhsalls, and allowing CHL on campus will be included by this. We really strongly believe that things as they are now, are no where near where they should be. I've even suggested that we have a small number of selected staff attend a course such as ICE/Rob Pincus' SARC to our SI, however he simply seems to have dismissed it for whatever reason. Hopefully as time develops, we can help initiate better training and protocols for all of our staff to help create the utmost secure environment without taking extremely impractical measures.

So, as far as I can tell, school security can always be improved. Ours wasn't great but is getting better - and still needs a ton of work to meet what I feel are acceptable standards. Technology can really help deliver the extra edge to help things become safer, if you can swing it. Since I only have experience with my area, I'd be interested to see and hear about how security is for a large ISD - I'd imagine it'd be a far cry from how it is for us.