Securing Our Schools: How Safe is Safe Enough?

To what extent should we secure our schools? That's the question this week in Scarsdale where parents, teachers and school administrators continue to debate school safety. Protocols in district buildings are under review and some are urging stricter enforcement of current measures and implementation of new procedures. As Scarsdale School Superintendent Dr. McGill said in an email to the community, "everyone involved has had to wrestle with the difficult balance between having a secure school and having a school that's an accessible part of its community."
This is not the first time school security has come into question, and undoubtedly will not bee the last.

In June 1999 the NY Times ran a piece about an anonymous threat that forced the closing of the high school. According to the piece, when school reopened, "All students had to file in and out of the same entrance as book bags and containers were inspected by local police officers. In addition, school officials closed the cafeteria's kitchen and canceled after-school and evening activities through next week, when school ends for the summer. Students were also forced to remain on campus throughout the school day rather than come and go freely during their lunch hour or free periods. And they were told not to bring pagers or cellular phones to school."

Several years later, after repeated bomb threats administrators installed metal detectors for a day at the high school, and the entire student body had to line up single file to be scanned before entering the building.

Now rather than bomb threats, school officials are dealing with fears of gunmen and pondering what can be done to fortify the schools and guard against intruders and marksmen. A recent letter to Dr. McGill suggests that teachers be armed with taser guns containing pepper spray and there are calls for other measures including:

• Checklists to account for the whereabouts of each student
• Silent alarm buttons in the school office to alert the Scarsdale Police, similar to buttons placed next to bank tellers. Pushing this button would be easier than getting to a phone and dialing 911.
• Key card access to allow students and teachers to enter doors that are normally kept locked during the school day.
• Retaining guards to man school entrances

Area nursery schools are also concerned. In an email to parents from Deborah Fine at the Little School she assured them that "we have reviewed our emergency procedures. ...We are confident we have your children's safety as our topmost priority."

It is indeed difficult to strike the right balance to secure the schools without turning the staff into security guards who spend valuable class time following cumbersome procuedures.

A few parents we spoke to were philosophical about the issue. Tatjana Dragic, a mother of three students in the district said, "After Hurricane Sandy we took down three large trees that were too close to our house and precariously rooted. We were heartbroken and are planting other, smaller trees to replace them. But the reality is that, due to climate change, there will be more strong winds coming our way and we cannot risk having trees fall on the house. The Newtown tragedy is a similar sign of our changing social climate, and that we need to be very serious about school security, all the while protecting the joys of childhood."

Author and mom of two Scarsdale students, Sharon Lippman added, "I'm not nervous. They have to go to school. Our schools do their best to protect our kids. Unfortunately, if someone has a gun and wants to do harm, there is, currently, not much a school can do to stop that individual. My holocaust survivor grandparents and my time in Israel taught me an invaluable lesson ... tragedies happen but life goes on and you have to live."