There may be no security issue more pressing than school safety. Schools are filled with defenseless children, making them easy targets. While an individual classroom might be easy to manage, recess yards and auditoriums present the challenge of potentially having hundreds of children in one place, making it possible for one to easily go missing. Even though the school safety threats are as significant as ever, the security technologies available are getting better and making it easier to control them.
School safety starts with a system that manages the entire building. Having a central station managing access to the building means that everyone coming in and out is identified and tracked. Combining a central station with electronic keys makes it possible to track a person’s comings and goings inside the school, as well. Deactivating access for anyone who turns out to present a potential school safety issue becomes as simple as typing a few keys, while letting vendors or visitors have temporary access to specific areas is equally simple.
Security systems go beyond tracking access, though. The ability to hear and see
through audio monitoring and closed circuit television or Internet cameras solves two school safety problems. First, the presence of the systems send a clear message that the space is being monitored. Hopefully, this will serve as a deterrent. If school safety gets breached, the monitoring systems make it easier to see who breached it, how they breached it, and what is going on.
Live audio verification also eliminates one of the key drawbacks to advanced
school safety systems. Sometimes, security systems can be too sensitive and create false alarms. False alarms aren’t just inconvenient and potentially expensive. They can also lead to reduced vigilance on the part of first responders or on the part of on-site personnel that simply assume that the system is “crying wolf” again. With live audio verification, an operator at the security company can listen to what is happening at the school, confirm that there is a problem, and confidently dispatch staff to deal with the problem.
Maintaining school safety doesn’t have to be an impossible task. Well-trained staff, a secure building perimeter and an electronically monitored security system working in concert with access control systems can reduce the risk of anything happening during the school day.
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