BAY MINETTE – After visiting just a fraction of the school campuses in Baldwin County, a safety committee uncovered “a lot of issues” with security practices.

“The good news is some of them have easy fixes,” said Kevin Levy, who heads the School Safety Advisory Committee for Baldwin County Public Schools.

After the school shooting tragedy in Connecticut in December, Levy stepped forward, volunteering his experience in both military and civilian law enforcement. Superintendent Alan Lee paired Levy with John Murphy as the backbone of the advisory committee.

“We have a wealth of background in law enforcement but our biggest accreditation is that we are parents and want to make sure not only our kids are safe, but all the kids,” said Levy.

The men visited four schools and talked in depth with the administration and conducted a detailed walk-though of each campus, making notes along the way.

Communications

The lack of communication was one of their biggest concerns. Is there a way to contact emergency services directly? Is there communications between schools? The answer to both is no, for the most part.

Initial plans were to equip each school with one police radio. The cost ($3,000 per unit) and having only one were impractical. The committee prefers the idea of three upgraded radios and a base station.

“You could use them for a variety of other uses,” said Levy, “from directing buses to sporting events. They would have back channels to allow people to communicate with each other.”

The channels would be federally licensed frequencies and digitally encoded to prevent someone from listening into school conversations. If something happened, there would also be a direct channel to law enforcement. The three radios and a base station for the office would cost around $2,700.

Levy noted the need for improved lines of communications between schools. He used the example of a suspicious car riding around a school. On the surface, it could seem minor. But if the same car was seen at other schools in the area, it could be more than a coincidence.

Deny and Delay

To make a school secure, you have to deny access to potential troublemakers. When they do gain access, you have to delay the situation until law enforcement can arrive.

In addition to fences and locked doors, the quickest way to deny access is to confront someone.

“One of the things is we have to train administrators to go up to people and ask, ‘Who are you? Where are you going? and Why are you here?’” said Levy. “Studies have shown that when confronted, most people will back down.

“If there is going to be a confrontation, I would rather have it in the parking lot instead of a hall. We just have to get the staff to understand it’s OK to challenge someone.”

While the committee is taking matters one small step at a time, when questioned about video surveillance, the men noticed some issues there as well.

Several cameras were poorly positioned. Instead of getting images of peoples faces as they entered the school, some cameras got the backs of heads. Levy said in some cases, the wires from the camera went to a secure, locked room. In another case, the video feeds and Internet networking cables all went to an unlocked room beside a common area in the school. In most cases, no one watches the video during the day.

Board member Bob Callahan said that video systems were put up by individual schools with no sense of standardization. Instead of being a deterrent, they were designed to gather evidence after the fact. “In some places, the video goes back to the principal’s office,” said Callahan, “and he’s out in the school all day.”

Levy and Murphy agreed that consistency and training are a must for staff at each school.

“If you don’t train, then when something happens, people don’t know what they are supposed to do,” said Murphy. “While we all think about the worst scenario and a shooter, a parent custody issue is something schools see on a regular basis. And you have to be focused on communications.”

He cited a Monday incident where a Chinese national was on a school campus shooting pictures inside busses. A maintenance man confronted the suspect, who said it was his hobby and left.

“He got a tag number, but it took several hours for the information to filter up to where it should have been in minutes,” said Murphy. “The information was given to law enforcement who were able to run down the rental car and confront him.”