School Security: A Learning Environment Can't Feel Like a Prison
By: Vona Cox
Over the past 35 years, a dramatic shift has occurred in the area commonly referred to as formal education. The situation has moved from a neighborhood facility that was a gathering place for educational, community and family events, demonstrating a very open and welcoming environment where the strongest security measure used was a hall pass, to a lockdown facility where the local children are hand delivered and retrieved with the intent of gaining an education without getting kidnapped, injured, harassed by drug pushers or gangs, or even killed, as demonstrated in recent events.
These frightening changes are real and, left unattended, will be a significant contributor to the demise of our education system, both in the public and private sectors. But, as with all other elements of life, we can respond and adapt to address these issues, given the availability and knowledge of the proper countermeasures.
Generally speaking, a post-event reaction at a facility is to spend unplanned resources on measures that only address the most recent situation, which most often offers unsustainable performance. On the other hand, planned physical security measures can offer mitigation against a variety of elements, once a vulnerability assessment has been conducted. Different techniques and technology will be required at different facilities, making a canned approach ineffective. But, there's more to consider. How will the completed security system look to those attending the facility, and to the neighbors in the immediate area? Have we secured the grounds but killed the aesthetic appeal of the facility and its surroundings?
Schools are no different than facilities that occupy a large number of people and face the same challenging elements as listed above. These include federal facilities of the FBI, DEA, and CIA, as well as private industrial campuses storing highly explosive substances facing what we call "Homeland Security" threats. Terrorism is not limited to our global enemies attempting to disrupt our way of life through the destruction of petrochemical plants that provide our oil, financial data centers that house our most critical personal information, and random detonations in common gathering places to instill fear into our citizens. Terrorism includes students of a school bringing weapons onto the campus for showmanship or intent to harm others and gangs who not only threaten the facility by means of vandalism, but also endangerment to its occupants.
Access control is one of the most common starts to addressing these issues for any type of facility. Let's take a moment to see how these situations can be reasonably addressed without having a fundraiser or passing a bond issue to pay for them.
First, let's make reference to the most common platform in security systems design as developed by the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS): Detect, Deter, Delay, Respond. Let's also dismiss the myth that higher security means a bigger lock on the front door. Security begins at the perimeter, not at the front door. Depending on the threat against your facility, detection at the perimeter as an integrated technology with the fence line is a good starting point.
1. Detect
Detection can be accomplished by several means from sophisticated video surveillance to systems as simple as buried or fence applied sensors. Depending on the fence material applied to, the sensors can be completely covert and tamper resistant. These sensors can actuate lighting, trigger alarms, or send a message to an assigned observation point, notifying them of a possible event.
Next is the fence itself. For most projects, this can be one of the greatest areas of potential for wasting money. As it comes into the construction schedule at the very end, many times, the type of fence that is implemented, not to mention the quality of the product used, is downgraded significantly to make up for budget overruns in earlier construction phases. The unfortunate result is that a poor quality fence is allowed, which becomes the eyesore of the community and a maintenance nightmare for the party holding long-term responsibility for its care. A significant shift in materials used on schools is seen in the utilization of ornamental steel fence, moving away from traditional chain link. An additional challenge involved with ornamental fence materials is selecting a product that has the same durability against rust and color fade, aligning with the life cycling of other materials used on the project.
2. Deter
The type of fence materials used will determine the degree of deterrence you can achieve. The stronger the platform used, the greater the potential will be for the threat to move to another location. In addition, making the fence higher with more threatening obstacles, such as barbed wire or razor tape, gains little, if any performance, not to mention the poor message it sends to the surrounding community.
3. Delay
Delay, the third element in completing your physical security package, is also addressed at the fence line in the first stage of an attack. Several of the ASIS vulnerability assessment models allow for four seconds of delay using a heavy gauge chain link fence with barbed wire atop. Other ornamental products are allowed one minute or more in the same application. This may seem to be a very short timeframe, but, in security, seconds count.
4. Respond
The last element is response. This can vary from local authorities being summoned to dedicated on-site security being alerted. Given your specific situation, an array of possibilities are available to generate the proper response.
In all, the combination of these four elements can develop a security presence for your campus that will result in a multi-phase security program, significantly lowering the risk exposure to the facility occupants.
Having a functional, and aesthetically pleasing, perimeter security platform supports what is known as a ductile security system, forcing an assailant to breach at several levels before gaining access to the target. Again, depending on the challenges you are facing, you could have physical security measures at the perimeter, at the face of the facility, and security measures internal to the structure. Taking a holistic approach to this serious concern is the only way to balance performance with an aesthetically pleasing result. This methodology, given the appropriate selection of technology and materials, can support our ever-growing concerns of providing an environment that is not only secure for our children, but the teachers who are educating the next generation of our country's leadership.
Vona Cox is the manager of marketing and communications for Ameristar Fence, www.ameristarfence.com .
Sidebar #1
Develop, Demonstrate and Defend Internet Integrity
By P.L. McClurg
Christian organizations, and schools, by bearing the name of Jesus Christ, identify themselves with Him and His Word; therefore, they are accountable to Christ, His Word, and the community of those called by His name to guard and protect against any "appearance of evil" (1Thes. 5:22) in an effort to become "living letters of Christ" (2 Cor. 3:3) for a world groaning under the weight of moral decay.
What if one in every two or three such "letters of Christ" came with pornographic inserts? Would we sit peacefully by and say that it's not our problem? Would we sit calmly in our school offices and organizational meetings and allow a pornographer to pass out free samples to all who entered? Pornography is a progressive, addictive substance with 24/7 access woven into the fabric of both our professional and private lives via the Internet. It's time to wake up and acknowledge the elephant in the room, which no one wishes to be the first to point out.
From the I- SAFE National Assessment Center report on online behavior released in November 2006:
* 50% of high school students "talk" in chat rooms or use instant messaging (IM) with Internet strangers
* 49% of high school students have posted personal information on their Web pages, which could assist a stranger to identify or locate them
* 20% of students in middle school as well as high school admit that they have met face to face with someone they first met on the Internet
* 38% of high school students sometimes hide their online activities from their parents
* 65% of high school students admit to unsafe, inappropriate, or illegal activities online.
I-SAFE has determined that "education plays a significant role in changing youth beliefs and behaviors online."
But, your school or organization has a filter, right? Are the computers in your school's library and computer lab the only computers in your school? Don't teachers and office staff also access computers? Are they accountable in any way?
What are the implications if the school is one day found liable for staying ahead of computer security issues? Wouldn't it be wise to consider your school's computer security policies? And do those policies apply to any computer brought on site or just the computers owned by the school?
Effective computer filtering is only part of the answer. We all would like to block it all and "just not go there." This position doesn't acknowledge the weaknesses inherent in filtering. Most filters can be easily bypassed in secret. They function using a black list of known pornographic Web sites and can't keep up with new pornographic Web addresses.
Accountability removes the temptation of a secret life lived in darkness. Fostering self-control and personal discipline, accountability causes people to think about their choices when using the Internet. "Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise men..." (Eph. 5:15). Those in leadership need to take the initiative to develop, demonstrate and defend Internet integrity.
Patricia L. McClurg is the wife of Lynn T. McClurg , the co-owner and vice president of Covenant Eyes . She is a registered nurse, lay counselor and Bible study teacher.
Sidebar #2
Improving School Security Through Better Visitor Management
By Howard Marson
In most schools today, visitors and contractors are either sent on their way with little or no questions asked, or they are asked to sign in using a paper guest log. While the former is clearly bad, the latter method of keeping track of non-students coming into your school may be perceived as quick and easy, but it provides very little value in terms of security and poses a number of other problems as well.
To improve security and keep better track of visitors and contractors, many organizations have implemented an electronic visitor management system to replace the outdated paper guest log. Such a system resides on a computer, typically at the main office, and automates the entire process of registering a visitor and printing a badge.
The more comprehensive systems electronically scans the visitor's ID (business card, driver's license or passport) and automatically captures all relevant information about the person (name, company, title, contact information, etc.) in a secure database file, including their photo and signature, the name of the person being visited, the reason for the visit, and their entry and exit times. The system then prints out a professional, customized badge in seconds.
Because the system is computer based, badge printing is easy, fast, and customizable. The badge can be black and white or color, and can have the school's logo, visitor's name, visitor's photo, name of the student or staff member they are visiting, expiration date, and any other relevant information printed on it. The school can even print self-expiring badges, which bleed through a color after 12 hours to prevent the badge from being reused another day. The system can also print a barcode on each badge, which can be scanned when the visitor leaves to automatically check them out of the facility.
In general, an electronic visitor management system will provide the following benefits:
* Streamline the check-in process ( less than 10 seconds from entry to badge printed)
* Capture detailed visitor information accurately and automatically
* Provide fast and easy reporting/analysis against the visitor database
* Keep visitor information confidential
* Provide high-quality, professional looking badges
* Enable authorized employees to pre-register visitors via the Intranet/Internet
* A llow multiple locations to be networked to share a single visitor database
* Allow integration with an existing access control system for controlling turnstiles, doors and other points of entry via barcode or proximity card
Security should be a top priority for any school, regardless of size. In addition to keeping better track of who is in your building and why, schools should also be aware of the image they present to all of their visitors. With an electronic visitor management system, visitors feel like they are in a professionally managed, more secure facility, and visitors, staff and students feel safer.
Howard Marson is the chief executive officer of EasyLobby, Inc., www.easylobby.com , which, since 1997, has installed thousands of secure visitor management systems worldwide.
Sidebar #3
Case Study
Trinity Christian School
Montville , New Jersey
Trinity Christian School in Montville , New Jersey , shared a problem with a lot of private schools all around the country.
"I'm the IT manager, here, but I also teach calculus, history, and music," said Norman Birkett. "I just don't have time to stand over the shoulder of our students and watch them while they use the Internet."
All around the county schools administrators are grappling with this problem. You want to give your students access to the educational and cultural content available on the Internet, but you don't want to sacrifice your schools core values to do it. While there is not one, easy answer to this question, many Christian schools around the country have used content filtering devices as a tool to help manage what students can see on and download from the Internet. While products like these have been around for a long time, recent programming advances have made unified threat management or UTM devices, as they are now called more powerful, and easier to use than ever.
"Having an Astaro Security Gateway (UTM device) installed (on our network) provides peace of mind for me as an IT administrator," Birkett said. "I know that the unit will restrict access to almost all inappropriate content, and that all activity is centrally logged, so if anything inappropriate does get through, I have the ability to isolate where that content came from and block that content when I have time."
Richardo Ortiz of Mt Pleasant Christian School in Ames Iowa agrees. "The Astaro product is very powerful. Our entire experience with the product was great. We only have about 150 students, and Astaro was still willing to send an engineer out to help us with the original installation. The total product cost was well within our budget."
The Archdiocese of New Orleans had a similar problem on a dissimilar network.
"Here in New Orleans , we run all our networks through the same IT system," said Robert Corcoran, IT manager for the Archdiocese. "That means we have to do content filtering for 80 schools with pupils from pre-K through high school, churches, health care facilities, and the business offices of Catholic charities. All these different groups have different network demands; we don't filter content for our first graders like we do for the HR department of Catholic Charities of New Orleans. We tested a lot of different products, but Astaro's ability to scale modularly by clustering and its ability to customize filtering for each user group made all the difference to us."
