This week school districts across Idaho have reached out to parents to reassure them their children are safe at school under the shadow of the mass shooting Friday at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Few Idaho schools are as safe, or at least have more safety features, than Middleton Middle School. As district superintendent Rich Bauscher explains hallways are monitored with security cameras and can be sealed by doors that swing closed and lock at the touch of a button in the principal’s office. Classrooms are equipped with panic buttons and doors lock automatically.
This all came about because the old school burned down in 2007. At that time Idaho’s Department of Education was beginning a push for safety and security. The new Middleton Middle School became a model.
Matt McCarter headed up the state's school safety campaign. In 2008 his team published astudy of school security throughout the state.
“It’s all over the map,” McCarter says. “Some are ahead of the game doing stellar work. And many of our rural schools don’t have the resources or capacity. But it varies quite a bit.”
McCarter says the report showed many schools had little control over building access. Some had no fences and several outside doors without locks. Many also lacked security equipment like cameras and lights.
“Radios were inoperable. P.A. systems didn’t work,” McCarter remembers. “Being able to call out a code red or communicate among staff or between a school and first responders, that wasn’t where it needed to be.”
The estimate to bring all schools up to the level of the new Middleton Middle school was a little more than $20 million. That was at the start of the recession. The next four years saw the state cut more than $140 million in education spending.
McCarter says many Idaho schools have made improvements despite the costs. But he doesn’t know how much has changed. That’s why the Department of Education is restarting the process from 2007. It will begin by reconvening a stakeholder group in January.
Copyright 2012 Boise State Public Radio