For most of us, our mental images of teachers rushing toward the Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman were vivid and horrible but fleeting.
We thought of the children, the carnage, the bravery, the unbearable anxiety. Then we turned to other things.
Those terrifying thoughts remain for the nation’s educators who know that an attack at their school is unlikely but possible. They might be the first line of defense.
Jennifer Moff, principal of Akron’s Innes middle school, knows she might find herself in the role of the Sandy Hook principal in Newtown, Conn., who rushed the killer in December and died trying to save the children she wanted to educate.
Twenty children. Six adults.
“I know that I would do whatever it takes to protect the kids,” she said.
Then she wiped a tear away.
Safer, but flaws remain
There were shootings before Sandy Hook in December 2012. Three died at Chardon High School in February 2012. Thirty Two died at Virginia Tech in April 2007. Twelve died at Colorado’s Columbine High School in April 1999, and others.
The Sandy Hook children were first-graders, which might explain why the reaction was so strong nationwide and is resulting locally in renewed efforts to make area schools more secure.
Akron now has police officers in every middle and high school. Suburban schools are at least assessing their security, and many are bolstering their facilities and their manpower to keep children safe.
It can be costly, but Ohio doesn’t have a consolidated way for schools to report security expenses in their budget reports to the state. A new, tightly secured vestibule might fall under capital improvements. New video cameras might fall into another category. Security could be mixed with academic training for teachers. A school police officer, usually called a School Resource Officer (SRO), often is paid by a city’s police department.
Richard Caster, senior school board services consultant for the Ohio School Board Association, says security purchasing mistakes have been made.
“There are a lot of charlatans that come out of the woodwork when you have a calamity like Sandy Hook, like Columbine and everybody wants to sell you their wares and schools have a tendency to become victims,” he said.
The burden falls to local schools and local taxpayers. The state offers security grants but those are limited to $5,000 per school. State construction funds can enhance security but usually involve building or renovating an entire school.
Old schools a challenge
Part of the problem is in how schools were built not so long ago. In many built before Sandy Hook, a visitor could walk right through the front door and into a classroom.
“We’ve put in a lot of effort to get our entrances secured so that when we have visitors come to the building all the doors are locked except the main entrance,” said Jon Burkhart, Director of Business Affairs at Medina City Schools.
Area school and police officials seem to agree that visitors should first go to a secure area with a video camera and an intercom. After identifying themselves and talking to a secretary they are allowed to enter the office, put on a badge or lanyard and finally enter the school.
The days of walking right in and handing your son a new pair of pants are nearly gone. Only a few schools lack this most basic precaution.
But that’s just a de facto standard. New schools are expected to be built according to security-minded building codes, but there are no requirements for older schools.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine published School Safety Task Force, Recommendations and Resources that gives administrators valuable tips, but not mandates or funding. That report is with this story on Ohio.com.
Schools also are required to submit a security plan to DeWine’s office but the attorney general has criticized many of those documents as poorly written and too dense to be valuable to police responding to an emergency.
In response, all administrators and police contributing to this story said they work together. Police who respond to a school problem are likely to have walked the hallways long before any incident. An exception, however, might be a Highway Patrol officer from a neighboring police department who happens to be the first responder to an incident. The Ohio School Board Association also has published Protecting Ohio Schoolchildren, An OSBA Guide to School Safety and Security that also is on Ohio.com.
Paying the price
Knowing what to do often precedes the funding to make improvements.
At least some area schools lack what could be called a secure vestibule. Those schools, often in the poorest districts, can be the most expensive to upgrade.
And because newer schools are already more secure, upgrading is less expensive there.
Woodridge Local Schools paid about $100,000 for video cameras, a secure vestibule and key fobs that limit the doors staffers can enter and identify who is coming in and out.
“We were fortunate because in our intermediate and primary schools they were already set up, so all we had to do was put the locks on doors and put the buzzer on it. So that was easy,” said Woodridge Superintendent Walter Davis.
Ohio law now allows districts to propose levies exclusively for security costs. Area administrators and Caster all said they have heard of no districts using that option.
Medina’s Burkhart explained why:
“Say you needed operating funds and you needed security funds, you wouldn’t want to put them both on the ballot at the same time because what would you do if the security funds passes but the operating funds don’t? You’re real safe but you can’t pay the teachers.”
In Akron, all of the schools have video monitors at entrances and hallways. Visitors must be buzzed in by secretaries, but many physical improvements are not made until a school is rebuilt as a community learning center.
Much of Akron’s emphasis is on police officers and SROs and much of the threat is considered to be within the school walls.
Daniel J. Rambler, Akron’s director of student support services and security, said the SRO’s “primary role is within the building. They work real hard to build relationships with kids, so kids will let them know what’s going on. They make sure kids get to class.”
How much is enough
In interview after interview for this story, administrators and police concede there are limits to how secure they can make their buildings. They regret that the improvements they necessarily leave unfunded will also become security weaknesses.
The Beacon Journal agreed, in the course of interviews, to not identify security weaknesses to protect the safety of the children.
Caster of the School Board Association said the first step is to walk through the school and look for trouble spots.
“My problem with it is if you haven’t done a very general analysis about where your weak points are, how can you make a decision and drop a half a million dollars on cameras?” he said. “Do you need that many?”
In some cases, Caster said security can be enhanced simply when a maintenance worker trims hedges to shorter than two feet and keeps tree branches above 6 feet to make it harder for a troublemaker to hide.
He said it takes imagination to see all of the threats and make those hard choices.
“Look at it as one piece of the security puzzle,” he said. “More cameras will not solve your problem. Arming staff, by itself, will not solve your problem. It is a myriad of things to target-hardened schools.”
He said security needs go far beyond the capability of most budgets: “You have to prioritize — and this might not go over so well — people will say, ‘How do you put a price on a child’s head.’ That’s an emotional question and I think we will all agree, you can’t. But realistically our boards of education, our city councils, when they pass a budget, whether it be for the police, for fire or schools, you are putting a price on safety.”
And once a cost is determined, the expense must be sold to the public. David Jones, director of buildings and operations, special projects and technology for the Summit Educational Service Center, said some people aren’t buying it.
“Unfortunately, I’m making a generalization there, you talk to some folks about it and they say, ‘Why do we have to pay more money to do that,’ and, ‘We can’t even buy text books,’ ” he said. “In other areas I think they are of the mind-set that ‘Oh we’re a nice small community and it’s not going to happen around here.’ ”
Other administrators noted that Sandy Hook, Columbine, Chardon and Virginia Tech all are in suburban or even rural areas. Knowing some people are uncomfortable thinking about the issues, Caster said there is some consolation.
“The chance of an active shooter coming in your school, doing what we are talking about is pretty slim,” he said. “Data still show that over all the entire country one of the safest places your kid can be is in a school.”
But he also spoke out for preparation:
“I really believe the people of Sandy Hook, the morning before he opened fire, felt they had a very strong plan that handled that situation.”
Dave Scott can be reached at 330-996-3577 or davescott@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Scott on Twitter at Davescottofakro.