Assessing School Security
How safe is your school? And what does it mean to be safe, anyway? A new School Safety Index, produced by CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G), seeks to identify where schools and school districts can make improvements in protecting their communities from intruders—the electronic kind as well as the human kind.
CDW-G conducted a survey of schools and found a variety of vulnerabilities—some as a result of inadequate electronic safeguards but even more as a result of inadequate human safeguards, such as limited budgets, lack of resources, or insufficient training of staff and students. In many cases, schools were unaware of just how vulnerable they were. CDW-G hopes that using the School Safety Index—with sections on cyber security and physical security—will help to remedy that.
Justin Schaef can relate to the survey's findings. He's the director of data management and technology at Washingtonville Central School District, about 60 miles north of New York City. Schaef has worked in the district for five years, and he's stayed on top of both cyber and physical safety issues. He's made sure that not only is the district's acceptable use policy included in the student handbook but also that guidance counselors go into classrooms to review the handbook. Every middle school and high school student has a computer account and a password. The district deletes all accounts at the end of the year and reestablishes them at the beginning of the next year. Schaef has installed about 50 cameras at the middle school and high school, mostly in internal public areas like the cafeteria. For emergency communication, the district uses an IP phone system that can make automated phone calls. In 15 minutes, they can reach everyone—contacts for about 5,000 students.
That's all on the plus side. On the minus side, says Schaef, "training is probably our biggest area of weakness." He meets monthly with faculty and conducts trainings, but sometimes, he feels, it's not enough: Training costs money, and Schaef points out that Washingtonville is a middle-class district. "We run a pretty tight ship on the budget," he says. "You try to make priorities . . . We try to do the best we can with the resources we have." One thing he's sure of, though, and that's to include the school community in all his major decisions, especially those involving video surveillance. "We weren't doing this in surprise or secrecy," he points out. "We did it with people involved." He himself recalls entering a school with an elaborate surveillance system and thinking that it resembled a prison; he was determined not to duplicate that environment.
Several thousand miles away, Roger Geiger, the director of technology at Forney Independent School District, 20 miles east of Dallas, can also relate to the CDW-G survey results, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. Forney is the third-fastest-growing district in Texas; currently, it comprises seven elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. Geiger's pluses are similar to Schaef's: They don't let students on gaming or social networking sites, they guard against hacking, all their campuses are connected to one network, and they have acceptable use policies that students and employees read and sign. For physical safety, they've installed some cameras and are retrofitting campuses for others. The high school uses a visitor identification system called Raptor: Visitors sign in and run their driver's license through the system, which—after screening for criminals—prints out a visitor's badge.
Like Schaef, Geiger says that training is problematic: "There's not a tremendous amount of training. The time available to train teachers is extremely valuable and extremely limited." Nonetheless, he maintains a high profile. He says that he confronts students who, for example, have done inappropriate searches, and "the word gets out." After 10 years, Geiger sees his main goal as "access awareness"—determining and standardizing who has access to what. And that applies to both cyber and physical security.
Forney and Washingtonville are only two districts out of thousands, but they reflect the successes as well as the challenges of school security. The CDW-G School Safety Index may help them pinpoint areas to improve. But what these districts have going for them, even more than a strong budget and a sophisticated network, is people who care about the issues—the IT administrators, parents, teachers, and students. In the end, that may prove to be the most critical factor. As Roger Geiger says, "We can get things done if it's in the best interest of our kids."
Links
- CDW Government, Inc., www.cdwg.com
- School Safety Index, www.schoolsafetyindex.com
