Buildings assessed

The Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida, sparked a Jay School Corporation effort to improve school security.

Part of that push was to “harden” schools — to make it more difficult for an attacker to gain access to buildings.

Some changes have already been made. But to detail an overall plan, the corporation needed more information.

“We had to get an assessment done to tell us how to do this,” said superintendent Jeremy Gulley.

To that end, Viridian Architects of Fort Wayne was contracted to look at each building, looking at procedures, site control, doors, windows, shelter-in-place locations, communication infrastructure, lighting, alarms, electricity and security cameras. It assessed each of those features and made recommendations with estimated costs.

The result is a 286-page report that Gulley is now reviewing.

A preliminary look shows that most buildings have the same issues, or potential areas for improvement, when it comes to their physical security. Doors can be made stronger. Windows can be made resistant to attack. A single point of entry can be created.

“When they look at that inspection, (the buildings are) remarkably similar,” said Gulley. “I think the only one that’s going to look really different in the near term is going to be East.”

That’s because of the current construction project underway this summer at East Elementary School in Portland.

As part of the project, Jay Schools administrators included increased security. One part of that will be heavy-duty doors that are “breach resistant,” meaning they are designed to keep intruders out.

Both East and General Shanks, which is going through a less intensive renovation project as the corporation consolidates from three Portland elementary schools to two, will have a true “single point of entry.”

That terminology means more than just funneling all visitors during the school day through one door. At East and General Shanks, visitors will enter into a vestibule. They will then need to be buzzed into the office and “vetted” before they are buzzed into the building.

Another improvement that is in process is the application of a film made by 3M that makes windows bullet resistant. It has already been installed at six of the eight schools in the corporation, beginning with Jay County High School in March, and will be at all the schools by the fall.

Jay School Corporation has been approved for $46,000 and $50,000 in state school safety grants for this year and next, respectively, and Jay County Commissioners committed to providing $100,000 for school safety measure from the economic development funds received from the Bluff Point Wind Energy Center project. But that’s just a fraction of what it will take to make suggested improvements.

“Here’s the big challenge — we’re talking millions of dollars for schools that were built in the ’70s to come to those improvements,” said Gulley. “We simply have to do them as projects come through the district.

“The question is, how far is this money going to go. And we don’t have that answer yet.”

Like the film on the windows, though, there are some things that can be done without a major project. Creating a single point of entry at some schools will be less labor intensive than at others.

And there are other suggestions, such as putting up fencing or other barriers around playgrounds to make them less accessible.

Gulley noted that making schools more secure will also require some changes in the way buildings are designed as well. For instance, windows might be built higher, so as to still let in natural light but limit sight lines into classrooms.

Overall, the report from Viridian will be used to give school administrators guidance as they make decisions about how to utilize school safety dollars on projects large and small.

“It does help us prioritize. It gives us some sense of what these dollars are going to mean. … We really are digesting this down. It gives us a roadmap. It gives us prioritizations. It makes it real easy for me to go to any future architect that we may do a project with and put this in front of them and say, ‘Make sure you have this.’”