How to Determine the Safety of Your Kid in a School?
Safety at a school allows kids to look forward to being in an encouraging environment. This, in turn, promotes social and creative learning. By any chance, if their safety is not met, children are at constant risk and absenteeism may rise. Promoting school safety creates an open space for kids to learn and explore new things. Breach of school security puts the lives of students, teachers, and administrators in danger and also affects the parents’ community at large. It leaves a significant impact on the quality of learning and can also lead to poor reputation and lawsuits. So, it is the responsibility of the school administration to find ways to make schools highly secure and safe for all the students and their staff. Also, parents are equally responsible for selecting the right space for their kids. They can analyze everything around and within the school before planning the admission of their kid.
Factors to watch out for determining the safety in a school
Limited entryways to the building: There should be only one main entrance to the school for kids, staff as well as visitors. The rest access doors must be locked and checked periodically to ensure that they haven’t been tampered with. Periodic inspections of the windows should be done to ensure that no one can enter or cause harm to the kids or the school building. Parents can have a visit and check this thing properly.
Monitoring by the school of parking 24X7 by an armed security guard: You should consider whether the school is monitoring the activities of the parking lot such as people leaving and entering.
Monitoring of common areas: Student common areas, for instance, activity rooms, hallways, and playgrounds should be monitored and video surveillance of these areas is a must to not miss anything.
Quality professional security officials: Maintaining the presence of school resource officers or security is also an important measure towards improving security. You can research about it and analyze the school on that basis.
Monitoring of visitors’ logs: It should be made mandatory for all visitors to check-in at the main reception or security desk, sign in and wear badges assigned to visitors. The training of the security staff should be to look out for strangers roaming in school premises without badges. Any suspicious activity must be reported to security immediately. Parents can observe these things by visiting the school regularly.
Conduct threat and risk assessment: Proper procedures need to be defined and assessment should be conducted through specialized teams. Drills for staff and students must be held from time to time to ensure that everyone knows how to respond in case such a situation arises.
Reviewing emergency plans and protocols: School’s emergency plans and preparedness procedures such as lockdown, evacuation, and communication procedures must be shared with the staff, students, and parents. Schools must provide training to everyone regarding how to respond to such emergencies. You should consider these characteristics as important for the safety of your kid.
Make students part of the security maintenance system: Kids should be encouraged to take part in maintaining the school’s security and schools must take their feedback from parents from time to time to update their security measures. Schools can encourage this by anonymous reporting and providing kids with teachers who have access to these systems. Sometimes kids are unable to communicate with people due to the fear of judgment. Allow them to talk to people anonymously. Toddlers are not that capable, so it is the responsibility of their parents to communicate these demands to the management of the school.
Fewer resource personnel: The responsibility of locking and unlocking the school’s buildings should be assigned to a limited number of people. Parents can check whether the school ensures strict protocols for key control or not. The number of people who have access to the keys should be documented along with their personal information.