Fire Protection Engineering Archives - Balancing Safety & Security in the School Environment

Schools should be safe and secure places for students, staff, and visitors alike. Without a safe, orderly, and conducive learning environment, students cannot learn, teachers cannot teach, and the fundamental mission of the school system has essentially been thwarted. The responsibility of creating safe schools lies not only with school administrators, but on the entire community in which the school resides. Although the best time to address facility security concerns is in the design phase, renovations or targeted initiatives that improve the level of safety and security should always be considered. In years past, safety in the classroom was not such a high priority for school administrators. Schools were thinking education, not safety, when schools were built years ago. Schools were designed to achieve an open and inviting campus-style setting with multiple entrances, expansive windows, and many opportunities for privacy. While there may have been the occasional fight or theft, issues like guns, snipers, bombs, terrorism, and other violent crimes were not at the forefront of most educational facilities planners. School administrators know too well that those days have passed. As everyone struggles to come to grips with the recent string of high-profile troubling events, school safety has gathered more attention.


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Today, it is commonly believed that schools are among the safest occupancy classifications with respect to the nation's fire problem. While this is generally true, a few notable instances show that this was not always the case. The deadliest school-related incident in United States history occurred at the New London Junior-Senior High School in New London, Texas, where a natural gas explosion killed 294 people in 1937. The Lakeview Grammar School fire in Collinwood, Ohio, claimed 175 lives in 1908. Most notably, 92 children and 3 adults perished in the 1958 Our Lady of Angels Grade School fire in Chicago, Illinois, as a result of an intentionally set fire. ¹

The most recently published study indicates that approximately 7,600 structure fires occurred per year in educational properties in the U.S. between 1994 and1998. ²On average, these structure fires caused 1 civilian death, 176 civilian injuries, and $82.6 million dollars in direct property damage annually. While the number of fires in educational properties has declined since 1982-1986, ³and fires in educational properties account for an annualized average of just 1.3% of the nation's structure fires, 0.1% of the civilian fire deaths, 0.8% of the civilian fire injuries, and 1.1% of direct property damage from 1994 through 1998, they are still worthy of attention.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Crime in the United States Series statistics indicate that approximately half the people arrested for arson were considered juveniles. A look at the causes of structural fires in educational properties shows that 49.8% of these were classified as incendiary or suspicious in nature. This is significantly higher than the 27% figure attributed to incendiary or suspicious causes in nonresidential structure fires during the same 1994-1998 period. The leading areas of origin for structure fires in educational occupancies were the lavatory or locker rooms (23.8%), hallway or corridors (10.0%), and classrooms or small meeting rooms (8.2%). Notably, more fires occurred in high schools than in any other educational property.

From July 1, 1998, through June 30, 1999, there were 47 school-associated violent deaths in the United States. ⁴Thirty-eight of these were homicides, 6 were suicides, 2 were killed by law enforcement officers, and 1 was classified as unintentional. News stories like those regarding the senseless killing of 15 teens in Columbine, Colorado, or 5 killed and 10 wounded in Jonesboro, Arkansas, weigh heavily on everyone's consciousness. In the 1996-1997 school year, 10% of all public schools reported at least one serious crime, and another 47% reported at least one less serious violent or nonviolent crime. Over the five-year period from 1995 through 1999, teachers were victims of approximately 1.7 million nonfatal crimes at schools, including approximately 1 million thefts and 635,000 violent crimes.

The 2002 survey of School Resource Officers (SRO) found that approximately 95% of school-based police officers felt that their school was vulnerable to a terrorist attack, and 79% did not feel that schools within their district were adequately prepared to respond appropriately to a terrorism-related attack. ⁵A majority of SROs surveyed reported that significant gaps exist in their schools' security, that their crisis plans are inadequate (55%), and that their schools' crisis plans are either untested or inadequately exercised (62%). The SROs described gaining access to the school grounds during school hours as being "very easy" (74%) or "somewhat easy" (22%). Similarly, the SROs described gaining access inside of the school during school hours as being "very easy" (37%) or "somewhat easy" (46%). Finally, 89% of SROs believed that crimes occurring on school campuses nationwide are underreported to law enforcement.

In the wake of recent high-profile school tragedies, concerns over school crime and violence have prompted many school districts to take various measures to reduce and prevent violence and breaches of security within schools. At least three states have approved laws establishing or governing the use of school security and safety plans (Alaska, Georgia, and Virginia). But school administrators are faced with the challenges posed by fiscal constraints, high staff turnover, and other competing priorities. One of the most important steps for any school district is the need to conduct a safety and security audit. One of the most valuable benefits of a comprehensive site survey is clearly identifying all of the possible security gaps. Without looking at the overall picture, administrators can get caught up in short-term fixes without doing much to increase the overall level of safety or security within the complex.

From the standpoint of maximizing the security aspects of a facility, the ideal school building would be located at the center of a large open field, be well-removed from any vehicular traffic, surrounded by an obtrusive fencing system, and awash in high-intensity lighting. Additionally, the school would be built with only one monitored entry door, no windows, well-compartmentalized interior areas, access-controlled doors on every interior space, and various other overt active and passive security-related features and systems. While this type of institutional arrangement might go a long way toward alleviating the security-related concerns at a school, it would certainly call into question the appropriateness of the facility with respect to fostering a conducive, nurturing, and inviting learning environment.

Unlike the host of well-known and widely utilized building, fire, and life safety codes, no such readily available codified recipe or source of information exists with respect to combating the safety and security challenges facing school facilities. The most widely reorganized host of tools has been compiled into a philosophy called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). ⁶

CPTED is based upon the theory that the proper design and effective use of the built environment can reduce the incidence of loss or potential for crime in any given occupancy. As such, it evaluates various school design and layout issues as they relate to proven crime prevention and security strategies. CPTED focuses in on the notion of security layering and defensible space planning practices. CPTED utilizes four key strategies to foster a safe and conducive learning environment: natural surveillance, territorial reinforcement, access control, and target hardening. Furthermore, designing a school security system relies upon a model that includes the following minimal elements: deter-rence, detection, delay, response, recovery, and consequences. These strategies are applied to the following elements of a facility:

• Site design features such as landscaping, vehicular and pedestrian routes, parking areas, recreational areas, site lighting, site access, fencing, etc.

• Building design features such as building organization, exterior elements, points of entry, doors/hardware, windows/hardware, roofs, skylights, interior lighting, etc.

• Interior space features such as the configuration of lobby and reception areas, corridors, stairwells, toilet facilities, public assembly spaces, classrooms, lockers, administrative areas, mechanical/electrical areas, storage areas, etc.

• Building systems and equipment features such as security alarms and surveillance equipment, fire alarm detection and notification systems, fire suppression and control strategies, telephones, public address and data communication systems, elevators, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, etc.

School administrators and designers cannot select the appropriate countermeasures unless a thorough and comprehensive threat assessment and security audit are undertaken. A focused team approach to addressing such safety and security concerns might involve security consultants, fire protection engineers, and other representatives from the design team in addition to representatives form the building staff, key community members, law enforcement, and the fire service. Threats to a school are further going to be categorized as either external (e.g., intruders, etc.) or internal (e.g., thefts, etc.).

School administrators strive to increase the level of security within their facilities without sacrificing life safety and building function. Having a single, controlled point through which access is gained into and out of a school building would certainly go a long way toward increasing the intrusion and theft-related level of security at a facility. Similarly, limiting the number of interior doors and placing physical constraints upon their use would further enhance the goal of security maximization within a given facility. Those conditions would, however, fly in the face of a fundamental tenant of fire safety. Whereas most building, fire, and life safety-related codes stringently regulate the number, size, placement, and nature of various means of egress components, these same codes rarely regulate ingress into a facility.

The number and placement of exterior doors that a given facility has is usually decided upon during the schematic design phase. At this stage, the design team attempts to gain a thorough under-standing of how the building will be used by its intended occupants and strives to facilitate these various functions. The goal of these initial design efforts revolve around accommodating the needs of the building's various occupants while providing due consideration for issues like convenience, aesthetics, inclement weather, safety, lost productivity due to excessive travel times, etc. These decisions are further refined and modified as code studies and program planning exercises are undertaken while the specifications and drawings progress through the design development stage and into the construction document phase. This is juxtaposed against the notion that the more points of entry that a building has, the more vulnerable the facility is to unwanted intruders. Therein lays the first major challenge to improving the overall safety and security level of a school facility.

Recognizing the inherent security-related vulnerabilities associated with exterior doors, many school systems have asked their design professionals to investigate various means to protect this perceived weak spot. Quite a bit of thought and discussion has recently ensued with respect to how predisposed notions regarding a conventional school's egress system can be modified to accommodate the equally compelling need to provide for a secure facility.

Fire safety experts have increasingly been called upon to work in conjunction with security consultants to come up with a basket of ideas that can be employed at school facilities. Some of the more common ideas have been listed below:

• The number of door openings in the building's perimeter should be limited to the minimum required to meet the prevailing fire and life safety codes. Careful consideration and investigation must be undertaken to verify that an adequate number of exits have been provided for from any given space or area. • The use of recessed entryways or the placement of doors in areas where they cannot be readily observed or monitored should be avoided.

• All exterior doors should be self-closing, positively latching, and automatically revert back to a locked state. • Where required, exterior doors should have as little exposed hardware as possible, be furnished with nonremovable pins or piano hinges, and provided with lock guards to prevent forced entry. Double doors should be furnished with mullions and centerposts to create a more stable interface at the latch surface.

• Doors should be made of heavy-guage steel or aluminum alloy and swing outward from a building, regardless of occupant load. School employees should check doors daily and have any damage repaired promptly.

• The special locking provisions available in the Life Safety Code ⁷for educational occupancies should be considered. These include the use of approved and listed delayed-egress locks. It is important to note that such locking systems come with a host of additional code-mandated requirements, including that the building is protected throughout with a code-compliant, supervised automatic fire detection system or supervised automatic sprinkler system.

• Horizontal exiting strategies can be effectively utilized as alternative exit routes.

• Propped-open doors pose a serious security breach. Door contact switches should be used to provide notification locally or at a centralized location any time that a door remains open beyond a prescribed time interval. This would help notify the appropriate personnel if a door was left ajar, propped open, or otherwise unable to be closed. Also, doors can be outfitted with electronic alarm systems that sound when a door was opened without authorization.

• Exit doors should not be chained or padlocked, since an oversight, distraction, or absence can easily result in the egress door being rendered unusable.

• Electronic proximity card access control systems can be used to limit entry into buildings or select spaces. Proximity cards are generally preferable over magnetic swipe cards or conventional touchpad systems since they are less prone to weather-related damage and vandalism. Access-controlled egress doors and electromagnetic locking systems are permissible for use within educational facilities, subject to several additional requirements in NFPA 101. Proximity card systems can be programmed with specific areas or times of authorization and provide an audit trail or record each time the card is used. Since these cards can also include pictures of an individual and other vital employee information, they can dually serve as identification badges and make someone without a badge easily detectible, since they would seem out of place without one. Modern proximity cards can also be provided with magnetic strips, bar codes, or embedded microchips that allow them to function in the food services and library checkout areas as well.