Safety is paramount

In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. a year ago, schools across the country made security improvements to protect their students.

Rockville Center schools were no different, adding new security features to help keep children in all of the district’s buildings safe.

“Our first order of business is always to make sure that the children in our schools not only are safe, but feel safe,” said Superintendent Dr. William Johnson. “And therefore, they can focus on the things we consider important to their education.”

Since the shooting in Newtown, the Rockville Centre School District has added more security cameras to its elementary schools, along with buzzers to unlock doors. This allows school officials to see who is at the door without having to first unlock it. “We’ve had buzzer systems in the past,” said Robert Bartels, assistant superintendent for business, “but many times they’ve been buzzed in without being able to see the person.”

As part of the bond that was passed earlier this year, the district will also be purchasing more security cameras for all of the buildings.

“There will be additional interior and exterior cameras,” Bartels said. “We have both now, but they’re not covering all of the building. With the additions, we should have all areas of the building, both on the inside and outside, covered.” Bartels added that the cameras will not be installed in instructional spaces.

Also coming from the bond, the district is installing locks on all the classroom doors in the elementary schools. Currently, not every classroom can be locked from the inside. But the new hardware will give teachers the ability to lock their doors in an emergency.

“We had talked about it at one point, trying to do it where you could lock them all down from one central location, but the technology and the wiring and everything you’d have to do was just way too expensive,” said Bartels. He added that he hoped the door locks and cameras would be installed by the spring.

Another new security feature, which Bartels said he hopes will be installed by the time students return from winter recess in January, is monitors in the front lobbies of the middle school and high school. The monitors, which will be hooked up to security cameras, will show many different angles of the entrance, including one that will show people themselves as they walk in.

“It’ll be a monitor with either four or eight views on the screen, one of which will be seeing yourself walk in so people become aware that there are cameras and there is a security presence in the building,” Bartels said. “As it is now, people walking into the building might not know there are cameras. There are signs, but if you don’t see the sign, you wouldn’t realize there are cameras.”

There are also about a dozen security guards between the middle school and high school who are on duty during the day. At night, the district has part-time guards that drive between the school buildings to check on security and do walk-throughs of the buildings.

“I think the children in the Rockville Centre schools are safe and feel safe,” Johnson said.