The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. has hired a firm to evaluate school security at two school buildings as the district works to make improvements by the start of the 2018-19 school year.
Facility Engineering Associates, based in Washington, D.C., will perform an audit at one elementary and one high school before the end of the school year, said Jim Roberts, BCSC superintendent.
The names of the two schools were not publicly identified by Roberts.
“In order to conduct the most authentic audit and receive the most valid information, I believe it is best to not announce locations and dates beforehand,” Roberts said.
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Roberts provided the BCSC school board on Monday with an update on safety and security steps the district is taking and said a phone conference was held earlier this month with Jim Funk, principal of CSO Architects, and representatives with a company that provides security products such as hardware and software.
Roberts said Facility Engineering Associates, which was recommended by CSO Architects, will examine different aspects of school security such as the district’s policies and practices. The work will also involve looking at surveillance cameras and the way people enter and leave buildings, he said.
CSO arranged for the safety and security audit at a limited number of buildings free of charge to BCSC, said Chad Phillips, the district’s assistant superintendent for financial services.
If Facility Engineering Associates is hired to work on a larger scale, the district would incur some costs which have not yet been determined, Phillips said.
The assessment by the firm will see how any improvements can be applied to as many the 18 school buildings within the district as possible, Roberts said.
Roberts, along with Larry Perkinson, BCSC student assistance coordinator, visited each of the district’s school buildings two months ago as part of an evaluation that involved checking doors to ensure they were secure.
The district hopes to learn the things it is doing well through the external audit, but also whether there are opportunities for improvement, Roberts said. BCSC also intends to make improvements over the summer before the 2018-19 school year if necessary, although costs at this point are not known, he said.
“We will look at the things that can be standardized,” Roberts said.
Still, Roberts stressed that safety remains a focus as it continues to assess security internally that involves monitoring doors to school buildings as it did earlier this year.
“We will be checking as much (as we can) with these two buildings,” Roberts said.
School board member Kathy Dayhoff-Dwyer said she welcomes the external audit, adding that an outside firm will be able to look at things in a different perspective.
“How can we be better? I want to be the best,” Dayhoff-Dwyer said. “To say there’s no room for improvement sets us up for failure.”
Fellow school board member James Persinger also said he backs the district’s plans to have an outside party review its security. Persinger, who has three children in the district, said he thinks the work will able to identify any gaps or holes that might exist.
“I’ll always force the principals and the administration to stay on their toes,” Persinger said. “I’m all for doing what we can to make children secure.”
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The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. plans to work over the summer to have improved security policies by the start of the 2018-19 school year, in addition to hardware and software upgrades such as cameras that might be necessary.
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