Mount Si High School’s Freshman Campus adopts new security systems

Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The red-lit panels at the side of interior doors are new this year at the Mount Si High School Freshman Campus. Maybe it’s because they’re new, but they’re also a little intimidating.

“It’s awesome, isn’t it?” Bill Davis, Snoqualmie Valley School District Director of Operations, said in response to that observation.

Davis grins like a student at the start of summer vacation as he describes the building’s latest security features, an integrated system of locks, clocks and notifications that  was implemented to improve security at the district’s most difficult building.

There hasn’t been an incident, Davis said, but the building, formerly Snoqualmie Middle School, has many entry points and operational challenges.

“We know that the Freshman Campus has always been one of our most difficult buildings to secure, because of the layout,” Davis explained. Three wings connect to a central courtyard, making access between wings complicated.

The building was the logical choice for the “prototype” project district staff have proposed, Davis said. “Part of the bond (a $244 million measure approved by voters in February) was $5 million to be able to spend for enhancement of security at the schools, and we knew we had two new buildings coming online,” he added. “We wanted to do a prototype in a building.”

Security improvements are being made at most district school buildings, too, just not as comprehensive as the ones at the Freshman Campus. For security reasons, the specifics of the prototype are not provided.

Features of the system, all part of the district’s subscription to Honeywell systems services, include more security cameras with wider fields of view, an electronic visitor registration process that includes a background check of each person visiting the school, electronic locks on all exterior doors, new clocks that provide both text and audible announcements, and mobile access to all of these systems for a few administrative users.

That last is Davis’ favorite. “You can look at it on a mobile phone, you can look at it on an iPad,” he said. “You can lock doors, you can see everybody that’s come through the door in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, you can put the building on lockdown.”

Just weeks after the electronic locks were installed, Davis had an experience that demonstrated the usefulness of the system. It was over a weekend, and a teacher wanted into the library, which was locked, he began.

“I’m sitting at the rodeo grounds and my daughter’s running her horse when I get the call. I told my wife ‘OK time me,’” he said, pulling his mobile phone out of a pocket. He signed in and unlocked the door. “It was 84 seconds,” he said, “The teacher was still on the phone and then said, ‘oh, the door’s open now.’”

Electronic locks keep the doors secured most of the time. Doors are unlocked by an administrative user, before and after school and for a few minutes between bells. Other than that, they have to be unlocked with a mobile device, or briefly opened with a key card, which all school staff have been issued.

The key cards took some getting used to, Davis said. “Everybody likes to swipe key cards,” he said, but the system requires only a touch of the card, not a swipe as in older RFID (Radio frequency identification) technology.

“It’s not RFID, so it’s not hackable like RFID… this is NFC (near field communication),” said Davis.

School district spokeswoman Carolyn Malcolm favors a different element of the new integrated system, the option to scroll text instructions during emergency procedures on each clock in the building. She said the district updated all of its emergency procedures in recent years through a federal grant, and the procedure instructions will be added to the messaging system in the clocks early next year, so that everyone in the building will be able to determine what’s happening and what to do.

Malcolm also noted that although the district will be able to account for all students in an emergency, via teachers’ attendance-taking and other reporting tools, that doesn’t help the parent who can’t be reached with news that his or her child is safe.

“That’s why it’s very important that parents have given us their contact information,” she said.

Eventually, the integrated system will be implemented in each school building. It’s already in the plans for both the sixth elementary school, scheduled to open next fall, and for the remodeled high school, scheduled to open in the fall of 2019. Of the district’s existing buildings, Cascade View Elementary School is the next to be updated.

For updated information on school security and all of the bond projects, visit www.svsd410.org.

Secretary Melanie Barnett uses the school’s new visitor sign in system to register a visitor.