The following suggestions are specific design and management tips for a safer school:

• Conduct a security needs assessment for each school with a uniform survey instrument.

• Have a districtwide crisis response plan and establish practices annually.

• Integrate school security systems and have them remotely monitored.

• Use natural and mechanical access control.

• Selectively use CCTV.

• Eliminate design features that provide access to roofs or upper levels.

• Develop a safe corridor program.

• Communicate your security policy to faculty and students.

• Have lighting on grounds from dusk to dawn.

• Have self-engaging locking mechanisms on all windows.

• Provide landscape buffers to reduce access to walls vulnerable to graffiti.

• Provide piano hinges on vulnerable external doors to reduce access.

• Be careful of placement of utility boxes along the sides of building walls that could provide climbing access to the roofs or

balconies.

• If basketball courts are exposed, provide and external water fountain to reduce need to climb over fences to get water.

• If basketball, volleyball or tennis courts are attracting nuisance behavior after-hours, remove the nets and hoops at the end of day.

• Be sensitive to placements of internal space protection devices near air conditioning vents or exhaust grills because the vibrations of the compressor kicking on can trigger false alarms.

• Doors, frames and locks must be Institutional grade to withstand heavy use and abuse. Faceplates should be used over locks to prevent jimmying.

• Reconsider the use of student lockers. The trend is for no lockers, and allowing the use of clear or transparent backpacks.

• School boundaries and exercise areas should be fenced with a vandal-resistant picket type of fencing.

• Limit the number of buildings to as few as possible, preferably one, to restrict access to outsiders and illegitimate users.

• Minimize the entrances to as few as possible - preferably one for student and faculty use - to restrict access to legitimate building users. All fire exits should be exit only, with no handles for reentry.

• Allow for a security person to be positioned at a single entrance onto the school campus to challenge each vehicle for identification of all occupants if needed. Buses and school employees would have their own separate and controlled entrance.

• Minimize the number of driveways or parking lots that students have to walk across to get to the school entrance.

• Allow for the ability to lock off the rest of campus from the gym during after-hours.

• Provide the conduit for present and future communication and security systems in classrooms and common areas.