School security: A weakness for BHS

An article was published on March 11th detailing on how schools can't be 100 percent safe from a school shooting.  Here's the entire newspaper article.  I would like to thank my friend who has a subscription to The Hawk Eye that was able to give me the article.

BHS Principal Tom Messinger made a statement that says quote, "I'd like to think some of the things we have in place would prevent something like that from happening at BHS.  You can never totally predict what will happen, but I think we have a lot in place that can definitely minimize what will happen."

While there were some changes from the school since I had graduated a few years ago, it still wasn't enough to protect the school of its entirely.  The school may have a few bells and whistles in combating the risk of a school shooting or any other related violence, there are still exploits that students can go through in creating the risk. 

The Fort Madison High School received funding to prepare creating a security system to help improve the school's safety.  I'm not entirely sure whether the West Burlington and Burlington School Districts received a similar amount for it, but it seems that the Burlington High School is, by far, the weakest link when it comes to security standards for a school listed in the article.

Security Cameras

The picture above is resource officer Brenda Zahner at the Burlington Community High School, monitoring activity of hallways, entrances, and parking lots.  Click on the image to expand it.

According to the article, there are 16 analog security cameras and 25 digital cameras.  Some cameras are equipped with motion-detection meaning that if motion is detected, the camera will automatically record whatever is moving.  This is located on the West Burlington School District, which is mainly the elementary, middle, and high school that is located next to each other.

The Fort Madison High School has only 36 security cameras.  There is no mentioning of the cameras being either analog or digital.  They are monitored by the high school office.

At Burlington High School, there are only 64 security cameras and one resource officer.  There is no mentioning of the cameras being either analog or digital.  The cameras are monitored by the one resource officer.

The problem I have with security cameras is that they usually have problems.  I've have set up digital motion detection cameras up before and there are always problems arising.  Motion detection doesn't capture everything that is moving.  Usually there are options to increase the sensitivity of recording detectable movement, but its not always accurate.  It may either record a part of a scene of something moving or skip it completely.  Occasionally it can record the entire moment of the moving object's action, but not all the time.  Power interruptions, internet interruptions, corruption of files, lack of hard drive space, etc. are also other problems that can arise from using motion detection cameras, similarly to analog cameras.

The second problem I have with the cameras is whether or not these cameras are set up well enough to catch certain activity.  Cameras have limited point-of-view ranges that doesn't catch everything that passes by them.  Some high-tech cameras have a 360 degree view of the entire perimeter.  Its unclear whether those type of cameras are set up at the high school or not.  The photo that shows the resource officer, looking at the screen does show some form of camera-moving capabilities that could be rotated through the program settings.  Its unclear how much of a field-of-view it can detect or how far it could move.  It could also be only the zooming, volume, and screen adjustment options.

Another problem I had with the security cameras is the amounts of footage it produces.  Normally, there are cameras watching the school on a regular bases.  Primarily, the times that is watched the most is before school around 7:00 and after school, sporting events, dances, etc.  Occasionally there are events that goes on into peak hours before and after the normal schedule hours for school.  

Let's assume that all the footage was recorded and that there aren't any problems with the motion detection system.  There is about 8 hours in a school day, which adds up to 40 hours per week.  If there are 64 cameras in the school, that adds up to 512 hours of different footage created per day, equivalent of watching the entire thing for 21 days nonstop!  That doesn't even include the other events that goes on at the school!  Many incidences could be missed easily if the person(s) monitoring the screen(s)  isn't there to watch it.

This can be applied with the other schools as well.  The West Burlington School District does verify the time and day of which the incident took place in their surveillance footage, however its uncertain of how many of the faculty or resource officers are there that watches or reviews the footage.  Its also uncertain of whether or not they are trained well enough to spot out unusual activity that many others don't judge in seeing it as such.  If they are faculty members, they are less motivated and trained to watch constant activity on the camera screens than an officer.

In the article, the school resource officer admits that she does roam the halls on a daily basis.  The picture above shows her communicating on the phone while having a monitor system hooked up, preparing to watch the activity that is going on at the school.  There isn't any mentioning about office staff or other faculty watching the cameras.  Although there is a mentioning that Zahner trains other staff members, its unclear what she trains them for exactly.  Its unlikely that they are trained in watching suspicious activity that is going on in the security surveillance.  So the questions are: Where does this recorded footage go?  Is it kept to review the snippets captured from the motion sensitive cameras or is it recorded of its entirely?  Are there clips missing?  How much time is the resource officer spending reviewing the cameras?  Is the resource officer reviewing old footage to incidents that happened that she or others that originally seen?  We don't know.  Clearly it should have been addressed in the article that was published.   

Hall Monitor

   The pictures above is resource officer Brenda Zahner at the Burlington Community High School, monitoring hallways and communicating to one of the students.

Excluding the camera's recording activity, the resource officer monitors the school by roaming the halls.  The problem is although its done daily, its unclear how long the resource officer spends their time monitoring the hallways.  There is a lot of ground to cover when monitoring a fairly large high school.

When I attended BHS, the previous resource officer spent much of his time in his office.  Occasionally he comes out to monitor activity in the lunch room, but isn't seen much roaming the hallways.  Standards with the new resource officer of today could be different, however I'm not there to see if the changes she makes are actually happening or is just for newspaper publicity.  

The school has always lacked funds for various things, like improving text books and upgrading certain school materials.  They wasted millions of dollars on pointless things that doesn't help improving the students and teacher's lives as much as it should.  Paying for a resource officer to monitor the school would probably be expensive and too much to handle for them to hire another one or even to monitor the hallways more.

Because of this expense, they may have organized several staff members to do the job supervising the students in both hallways and in the lunch room.  The problem is that we don't know whether they are all there at once or only a couple or less are paroling area's, like the lunch room.  Its also unclear whether these are mostly teachers doing it or office staff members.  Normally the principal, the resource officer, Turner, Dean, and a couple of others occasionally does their part of monitoring students, however there aren't enough of them there to watch closely of what is going on with hundred of students, either passing by or eating at lunch.  Some of them have other duties than sitting nearby the lunchroom or walking the hallways.  They are mostly assigned in their offices, doing other specific tasks. 

It would be nice for the school to have at least 1-2 more resource officers, monitoring the large high school at a regular bases.  However, their budget isn't as important to protecting them as it is to receive governmental funds and increased teacher salaries that is requested on a regular bases. 

The cameras placed in the school would probably make it cheaper for the resource officer to stay there rather than trying to monitor the halls.  The problem is that cameras have their limitations and that human monitoring in the locations will help fix them.  

Locker and Bookbag Checks

While continue reading the article, I never found any discussion about locker and bookbag checks from any of the schools.  The only mentioning of it was at the end of the article where Bruce Snodgrass says quote, "You want to be able to say we can catch it.  Unless you are searching every backpack and every student coming into the building, I don't know if any district can 100 percent say somebody can't get in here with a gun."

Several months after we had the first couple of bomb threats discovered written on the bathroom walls, there has been discussion about locker and bookbag checks.  It seemed like that every locker and bookbag check we had while attending the school that it was announced early and ahead of time.  I remember one student that I attended class with brought his bookbag into the back corner of the classroom shortly before the checks would begin.  The student never came back for the bookbag until the end of the school day.  A couple of other students have offered me to hold onto their stuff, wrapped in magazine pages.  

While I suspected that students are trying to lend other students items that shouldn't be on the school grounds, it still continued through my senior year.  A couple of students I knew carried switchblade knives on them.  One day, one of the students were caught with it it out near their locker.  Although charges were made and other punishments were made, the student continued going to the school.  

Several months before the incident occurred, a former teacher had offered a large knife to a student whom was recently released for assault and drug charges.  The purpose that was given to use the knife was to perform with it as part of a practice play since the original fake prop of it wasn't purchased or made at the time.  The student's part in the play was to chase another student up and down the stage's steps, weaving around the sitting areas where the audience would sit near the stage, and then finally back up the stage.  We had to make the promise to the teacher to never let anyone know about the play practices in regards to the knife chasing scene.  After a while, a fake one was made and then eventually used for the actual performance in front of the attendees.

These 'checks' were nothing more than distractions that didn't do any good in dealing with reducing any illegal materials that were being processed into the school.  The officer's dogs, as well as the officers are the only ones that are able to check the lockers and bookbags that are in the lockers, but they are unable to check the students themselves for illegal materials.  Classrooms open up to areas of the building where it makes exceptions in checking the area for such items.  Doing that however would take up even more time and thus result in cancelling school for the day.

A system was talked about years ago, but was never implemented and that was metal detectors near each of the entrances.  If the high school is willing enough to use the money they have to set these up, maintain a private, randomized, and frequent locker checks; and forbid students storing their bags in classrooms; that would help increase the chances of catching someone with something that isn't allowed on the premises. Sadly, the school district does what it wants to do and that is waste money on non-helpful means for student and faculty safety, as well as improving their lives of education.

Lockdowns

Attending the high school with lockdowns were harsh and uneasy for many of us.  Privileges of leaving the room were limited and had to be escorted by a faculty member.  The most extreme thing that was done against the students was the limited passes we could use to go to the bathroom each week.  Many students have the tendency of using the bathroom due to variety of reasons.  If the passes were all used up, they can still be escorted to the bathroom; however the student would then receive a 10-15 minute after school detention.  Because of this, many students and parents complained and argued with the school for creating this unfair rule.  It was later reversed.  Depending on how many students needed to leave the classroom, it varies with time of which a student has to wait to be escorted from their rooms to go to a destination and back.

Classroom doors were locked from the outside, but not the inside, which was useful to prevent any intruders from walking into the room.

There were some entrance doors that were always unlocked, which I had discussed in my Letter to the Editor.  As far as I know, they could be fixed by now with the security sweeps that are made.

The West Burlington Schools has many security practices that seems to help with protecting their schools.  Things such as practice drills, alert systems, even having officers come over and examine the security to see if it checks out.

For the Burlington High School, it doesn't have any of these.  Most of the time the school is already in a lockdown mode.  There are no alert systems or people examining the security top to bottom to see what the school is lacking and how it should be fixed.  The practice drills do occur according to Messinger, however when I attended, it was a whole different story.  There were no practice drills, just the entire building locked down the entire time.  The only alert system them have is the cameras being watched from the inside.  If something happens, its up to the resource officer, the school's camera's, and locked doors to deal with it.  

That concerns me that students who are attending classes at the local college or leaving for their senior privilege access aren't trained to deal with a current lockdown.  When I left the grounds for senior privileges, I could easily access the doors behind the metal and wood classes, as well as the two other doors that were unlocked in the other building of the school.  Because of this new system, students have to go around the entire way to access the main door or by the cafetiere to get in through a buzzer.  

When I attended the school, there was a system that was setup where a teacher can use their ID to access the lock to each particular door of the school.  I was able to grant access to a couple of these doors by borrowing a teacher's ID tag to get into a specific building or door.  That was only a couple of occasions that I had accessed doing it.  I'm not sure whether the same system is still in place or not, but I felt that it was easy access to get through.  Borrowing a card from a teacher or other faculty member can easily grant whomever owns the card access to the school.  Hopefully the system has changed around where cards are more restricted and shouldn't take old ID cards from previous years to gain access.

Bullying and fights

Messinger comments that "One of the bits of research shows the more engaged the student is in school, the less likely they are to drop out and the less likely they are to fail classes."  That isn't always the case as humans vary with attitudes when it comes to school.  Working on an education at a high school isn't as engaging as working for a college degree at a university or a college.  The high school I attended has low standards of challenging students to their fullest potential, thus making it easier to slide through certain courses.  The material has repetitiveness and its nothing new.  Being engaged in school does not solely prevent a student from failing or dropping out of school.  It depends on their situation with life, such as physical or mental issues, family and friend conflicts, lack of parental guidance, etc.  Students go through many problems with their lives, especially with bullying.  

The big problem why there is such a problem with dropouts and failing students in school is the school itself, as well as a lack of guidance.  Having to hear parents and student's stories about their councilors giving failing students negative advice to drop out of school because they lack confidence isn't going to help.  Jack Wail and Mrs. Clemenson are the two councilors I hear about the most from parents and students who have a problem dealing with their negative feedback given to failing students.

Tom Messinger, on the other hand, tries to find an unreasonable way to punish the conflicting students instead of one of the students of whom were creating the conflict.  Having to deal with much of the bullying throughout high school, Tom loved to twist the story that was made to him around so that both me and the conflicting student would appear to be the two troublemakers that started the conflict.  Parents who originally had their children removed from the school expressed to me that they didn't like how these things were going on at the school and that their children were moved to the West Burlington High School in order to avoid anymore conflicts from both the faculty and the students bullying them.

I made plenty of discussion items listed in the Letter to the Editor that expressed other matters that happened in the school when I was attending there.  Its absolutely pointless for faculty and students to start bullying the students who have the least say in trying to resolve a issue that no one is able to receive help from, except from their families.  I too had to deal with a lot of the mess of bullying, but thankfully never received a councilor's two-cents worth or fought anyone.

The verdict

After going through most of the details listed from the article, I conclude that the West Burlington School District is much more safer than living in the Burlington Community School District.  I'm confused why schools like Leopold, James Madison, and the rest of the grade schools from the BCS District wasn't listed in the article as they had some form of security methods placed in the past as well.  Although I may have not attended the school, the information listed in the article, as well as the positive feedback I heard from parents tells me that this school is much more comfortable and not-too-restricted style is the best place to have a child attend school in the general area.

As for the Burlington High School, it has very poor standards when it comes to dealing with security.  Attending the entire four years at the school, two of which were lockdown years; and hearing parents and students complain about the crap the school pulled on them, its safe to say that the school isn't worth mentioning as a possibility to attend school there to feel safe and secure from everyone.  Of all the things I seen and witnessed, I see no point of recommending anyone to attend to the horrible school.

While schools may not be able to be 100 percent safe, there is still room for improvement in making it become better and safer.  While one district strives to make honorary improvements and practices, the other leaves little to no room for honorary improvements.