Architecture and Simple Fixes Can Help Improve School Safety
Date Posted: February 19, 2018
Posted In: Ideas, Projects,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: When Pattonville School District leaders planned the transformation of an old elementary school into a revamped preschool, they thought of everything they could add to the building to protect their 3- and 4-year-olds from a potential shooter.
For example, all the classroom and office doors have new locks that will automatically engage during a lockdown. Pattonville officials wanted those locks because they knew that, during the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Conn., people died because classroom doors were not locked in time, said Pattonville Chief Financial Officer Ron Orr.
To get into the building, visitors have to enter a small room lined with concrete blocks and speak with an office assistant from behind a window of bulletproof glass to gain access to the hallway. Pattonville officials wanted that bulletproof window because, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the shooter shattered the transaction window with a shower of bullets to force his way into the school.
“Every time a tragedy happens, we learn things,” Orr said.
Even before Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where at least 17 people were killed, even before January’s shooting at Marshall County High in Benton, Ky., in which two students were killed, Missouri educators and architects have been asking themselves: If a shooter were to come for our children, would our school buildings be able to stop them?
The frequency of school shootings in the United States has pushed building safety beyond simply having working fire alarms, locked front doors or an intercom to buzz in visitors.
Architects and safety experts are asking school leaders scores of questions: Do the first-floor windows and doors have bulletproof glass or film? Are there surveillance cameras and fences around the property? Are the bus drop-off lanes clearly separate from parent drop-off lanes?