Security

FETC 2025: Make School Safety Improvements From the Outside In

When determining which security upgrades to prioritize, K–12 leaders should first examine their perimeters.

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Rebecca Torchia is a web editor for EdTech: Focus on K–12. Previously, she has produced podcasts and written for several publications in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and her hometown of Pittsburgh.

Overhauling your school’s physical safety strategies and technologies can seem like a massive undertaking, especially in older buildings.

“The average age of schools in my former district is 57 years. What we call our four new schools are 25 years old,” said Kacey Sensenich, retired CTO of North Carolina’s Rockingham County Schools. Presenting a session titled “EVERY Second Counts: Ensuring the Safety and Security of Our Schools” on Thursday, Sensenich encouraged FETC 2025 attendees in Orlando, Fla., to break the large project into more manageable pieces.

To do this, she recommended school leaders review the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS) layers of protection and work from the outside in. “If there’s no policy about teachers not propping open doors, then everything beyond that is kind of pointless. You have to get policies in place.”

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The Layers of Protection for K–12 School Safety

PASS breaks down the layers of protection for K–12 school districts into five groups, from districtwide to classroom interior.

Going through each layer in your own district can help you make a case to your administration or in a grant for additional security funding, Sensenich said. “This also helps when you’re talking to your board of education,” she said. Highlighting what you’ve already achieved “helps them focus, and it doesn’t sound like you’re coming to them with yet one more thing you want them to spend money on.”

Here are some of the solutions that schools can put in place at each level, starting today.

The Districtwide Layer

The districtwide layer — the highest-level look at school security — includes numerous changes schools can make with almost no financial strain. These include new policies and procedures, such as districtwide physical security standards, annual physical security assessments and lockdown drills. There are also changes that require some spending, such as visitor badging systems and volunteer background checks.

However, schools can be smart about these costs, Sensenich said. “Notice that it doesn’t say online, pulling data from the FBI database. It just says, ‘Do you have a system in place for visitor management?’”

DIVE DEEPER: Improve school safety and security in K–12.

Also in the districtwide layer: Make sure that buses and other school vehicles have a radio system, that first responders have a building access system, and that entrances are clearly marked for first responders and visitors.

Sensenich explained why she clearly marked the doors at Rockingham County Schools with signs that help direct visitors. “If I have an event and I call 911, I can say ‘Go through door 16.’ Because nobody knows where the red hall or the northwest corner is.”

The Property Perimeter Layer

The aptly named property perimeter layer addresses physical security measures on each school building’s property. Evaluating this layer of security includes considerations such as:

Best practices for outdoor activities and events
Assessing the safety of school grounds, including lighting
Having a clearly marked, designated visitor entrance
Audible mass notifications for students and staff
Fixed cameras with a wide, unimpeded area of coverage

In assessing camera placement, Sensenich encourages schools to review their cameras’ visibility at night. “Sometimes the lights being on is worse for your infrared than the lights being off,” she said. “Decide between infrared cameras and adding more lights,” in some situations.

WATCH THE VIDEO: Camera upgrades bring physical safety into focus.

Sensenich also noted that within this consideration for her former district, landscaping became a problem. “Those shrubs that we thought were a great idea were getting into our camera view,” she remembered. “They cut them down the first year, and they always forgot that bushes grow. By the next summer, especially if it had rained a lot, they were in the way.”

The Parking Lot Perimeter Layer

Not only are cameras important for this layer, but signage plays a large role here as well. Labeling parking areas, directing individuals to the right locations and identifying emergency communication devices are key. Parking tags are another safety measure schools can implement as part of the parking lot perimeter layer.

The Building Perimeter Layer

As schools work their way down to the building perimeter layer, security upgrades become a bit pricier, especially for older or existing buildings. “If you’re building a brand-new school, these things should already be there,” Sensenich said.

There are many architectural elements to put in place as part of this layer of security — a secured vestibule, a bidirectional amplifier or distributed antenna system, one-way film on exterior windows, a main entry door intercom with two-way communication, and video intercoms at visitor entrance points — but these could be difficult to implement without ample funding and building renovations.

Access control is a critical part of the building perimeter layer. Schools should have secure doors with a key system, monitoring and electronic access control to limit who can enter buildings. Detection systems and alarms for exterior doors are important as well.

The Classroom/Interior Perimeter Layer

One of the most crucial pieces at the classroom and interior perimeter layer is locking classrooms. “No classroom with a door locked in the United States of America has been officially breached. It was open in some way that they were able to get in,” Sensenich said.

However, schools should be careful about the types of barricades they build into their classrooms, she added. “If you really want to drill a hole in your floor and block your door, what is your process for when kids go in and block you out?”

Teacher training is another part of this layer of security.

If there’s no policy about teachers not propping open doors, then everything beyond that is kind of pointless.”

Kacey Sensenich Retired CTO, Rockingham County Schools

When training teachers and staff, it is vital to train substitute teachers as well, and they should also be given the necessary tools to keep students safe, Sensenich said. “Have you provided them the tools they need, or did someone unlock their classroom door for them to make life easy, and now when they’re in a lockdown, they can’t lock their door?”

These are the types of considerations school districts need to be mindful of, at every level, to paint a full picture of physical safety for staff and students.

Bookmark this page to keep up with our coverage of FETC 2025, and follow us on the social platform X @EdTech_K12 for behind-the-scenes looks using the hashtag #FETC2025.