Photo by Kamweti Mutu.
Elena Conic starts ninth grade in D.C. on Monday. She has all the usual fears of being a freshman—going to a new school, making new friends. But she’s also worried about school safety.
“It’s a lot scarier going to high school now,” she says. “I knew before that school shootings happened. But now that is all over TV, social media and things like that, it’s something that really scares you.”
Conic’s fear is not unfounded. According to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, there have been 25 school lockdowns in the area since January in response to a number of issues, including bomb threats, nearby shootings and sometimes due to false alarms. There was a total of 4 shooting incidents around District schools.
Following the shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February, local officials have begun beefing up security for the coming school year. In D.C., Councilmember David Grosso ordered a review of locks on classroom doors after reports that many of them didn’t work. And both Montgomery and Fairfax counties conducted full reviews of their district security budgets and practices.
These surveys resulted in a number of plans the districts will pursue.
D.C. Schools Get ‘Basic’ Upgrades To Locks
DCPS Chief Operating Officer Carla Watson told the D.C. Council in April it would cost $15 million to bring all 116 schools up to date on security, similar to the newly constructed schools. That cost includes upgrades beyond the locks on classroom doors, and the plan changed a few weeks later, focusing just on doors.
“We have revisited that, because we don’t have $15 million, to look at more of the basic need,” Watson told the council in June. “We did an analysis of all of our schools. We then identified 54 of them that needed locks on the classroom. It’s more around the number of $5 million at this point.”
Watson noted that the $5 million would cover the cost of new locks, door frames and doors as needed. The proposal is still under review.
Montgomery County Redesigns Doors
Pulling from a savings fund the district maintains, Montgomery County officials plan to spend $2 million to redesign school entrances for security, to upgrade the computerized visitor management system, to add swipe-card controls on school building doors and to put cameras inside elementary schools.
The redesigned school entrances will create holding spaces at the schools’ front doors. This will force visitors to go through the main office of a school before entering the building. The district hopes to have all the entrances redesigned by the end of this year.
Fairfax Spends Millions, Considers Spending More
After the Parkland shooting, the Fairfax County School Board requested a security review. The district’s Office of Safety and Security came back with recommendations for over $20 million in changes.
After emotional debates, the board approved $4 million in spending for security. The money covers mental health support for students, locks on classroom doors and various safety and security training. This could just be the start: The district is still debating how much to spend on security equipment such as exterior school cameras.
While these changes address several safety concerns, they haven’t put all parents at ease.
“There will never be a sufficient amount of money invested in school security,” says Fairfax County Council PTA President Jane Miscavage. “From a parent point of view, one mom said to me last spring, ‘I just want my child to come home from school alive.’ And that’s a dramatic way of stating it, but it shows kind of that palpable fear that so many of us feel.”
Miscavage says she hopes more districts also provide parents with materials to talk to their children about school safety. She says conversations with her two high school children have helped ease concerns ahead of the new year.
