How safe and secure are you going to keep your school this year?

It’s back to school season and students across the country will be heading back to school for a new academic year. With school starting, it’s now even more important to consider the safety of your students and staffs.

One of the most important aspects to be given top priority as you prepare for the school year is school security. It’s important that schools prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. It is important that students are given a safe and protected environment in which to grow and learn.

Why?

This is because schools are not exempted from the ongoing and growing threats such as violence, vandalism, bullying and other serious crimes. And that is also why keeping a school secure and safe is a very important task that should not be taken lightly.

Although, the back-to-school season doesn’t mean you have to worry more about these threats. You just need to take more precaution to ensure that certain security measures are put in place (at the right time) to give everyone (students and staffs) a safe and secure experience during school hours.

10 Back To School Security Measures for the School Year

• Conduct a Security Audit

First of all, you’ve got to audit your security to check for anomalies. The security measures you implemented last year cannot not be used or implemented this year. In fact, there might be security loopholes in them and that’s why they require upgrading to be able to provide school safety. So you need to do a security risk assessment to determine and discover those loopholes and what additional security measures is needed to keep your school safe and secure this year.

• Talk to Students and Staffs about Safety

Next you need to talk to your students and staffs about security. Be specific and talk to them what they need to do or who to call during emergency. Make sure they know and understand emergency procedures and how to implement them.

• Enforce ID Requirements

If you really want to keep your school safe and secure this year, ID requirement must be enforced. And it starts by ensuring that ID cards are issued to not only the students, but the staffs as well and should always be in their possession at all times. This helps to account for every member at the school.

• Create Emergency Procedures

It is very important that emergency procedures such as evacuation or lockdown are created to ensure that the school environment is safe for learning and working. For example, evacuation procedures are carried out whenever there is fire out break or a lockdown procedure whenever there is an intruder in the school.

• Hire a Professional Security Guard

As mentioned earlier, schools are not exempted from the ongoing and growing threats such as violence, vandalism, bullying and other serious crimes. That’s why most schools are having security guards stationed at the entrance of their schools.

In as much as security guards can be used to prevent crime and maintain security, not all are capable for this function due to negligence on the job. Therefore, to protect your school this year, you’ve got to hire a professional security guard who is highly capable in keeping your school safe and secure.

• Conduct Background Checks on Staff before Hiring

At the starting of every school year, most school carry out new hires of staffs to fill in the vacant positions. And most don’t usually do a background check on staffs before hiring. So, before you hiring any new staff, ensure you conduct a background check to ascertain the employee doesn’t pose a security threat.

• Monitor Students’ Activities

Being able to monitor students’ activities is essential to keeping them safe and secure. This is because students can be careless and will not take safety rules seriously. And with such careless acts, the ongoing and growing threats such as violence, vandalism, bullying and other serious crimes will be inevitable. Therefore, ensure that the various activities engaged by students during school hours are monitored at all times. This will help to detect any wrong or shady moves for safety.

• Carryout Emergency Drills Periodically

Creating emergency procedures or plans are important. But having them set on paper without practicing them will be improper. Therefore, it is essential that emergency drills are carried out periodically. For example, fire evacuation drills should be held at least once per term, preferably at the start of each term.

• Enforce Visitors’ Program

From a security point of view, it is VERY important that visitors are screened, documented and monitored during their visit to the school. Because having unauthorized or undocumented visitor inside the school can pose a threat such as kidnapping to the students. To prevent this, you’ve got to ensure that visitors must be cleared before they go into the school premises. This guarantees that the numbers of people who go into the school are properly screened for safety.

• Ensure the School Premises is Protected with a Gate

Having a security guard stationed at your school premises is not enough. The premises have to be protected with a fence and a gate. Therefore, you’ve got to ensure that the school premises are well-built with fences and gates. This helps to checkmate and control whoever comes and goes in and out of the school premises.

Conclusion

There are many obvious reasons to put security measures in place at your school. Among the reasons are to prevent risks, dangers and crimes.

With the above back to school security measures, your students, staff, and others are going to feel more secure at a school where safety and property are not only respected but given a top priority.

This will also enable your students to better focus on their study without bothering about any threat and help build a great future for them.

If you need help in putting the above school security measures in place to protect your school this 2017, contact us now!