A safe, healthy & nurturing environment.
Our school climate will enhance educational performance by focusing on each child, meeting individual student needs by emphasizing safety, a healthy personal outlook, proper nutrition, and physical fitness.
We are committed to the safety of our students by providing facilities that are secure from harmful influences, both inside and out. Annually, we will partner with staff and community to identify security improvements and commit necessary resources to accomplish them in a timely manner.
As we prepare for the transition of students with the opening of the new Woodland High School in the fall of 2015, we will be focusing on the remodel work to make the spaces more effectively utilized by the ages of students who will arrive at each school. Additionally, we will be doing some infrastructure and safety improvements in the schools.
The following priorities have been identified for safety and security:
The current MS/HS Campus and the Primary School campus have multiple access points that are unable to be effectively secured. We are planning to secure perimeters of schools so that unauthorized access is restricted.
In all of our existing campuses, entrance into the schools is into the main corridor rather than the office area, allowing unauthorized access to the school and students. We are planning to modify the campuses to have all school-time access be directly into the office area of each campus.
Over time, the schools have become less secure as keys have proliferated throughout the community, allowing unauthorized access to the buildings both during and after school hours. The Intermediate school currently has an access system that allows only authorized users to have access to the building after school hours using an access control system that requires entrants to “fob in.” If a “fob” is lost, it can be deleted from the system and any finder would find it unusable. Schools will be equipped with an access control system that eliminates the need to distribute exterior keys to the buildings. Very few individuals will have keys that access the exterior of facilities. Typical users will have a proximity card or similar device that they can use to access facilities.
Currently nearly all classrooms have locks that can be locked from the outside only. We will be exploring costs and opportunities to install double-cored locks in classrooms that allow users to either press a button or inert a key from the interior of a classroom so in a lockdown situation, classrooms can be locked from inside without the teacher entering the corridor to lock a classroom door.
The current internal communication system in our building uses intercom systems that, by today’s standards, are antique and very limited in function. With the upgrade we anticipate renewing these systems to current technology that will allow us to have better two-way communication with classrooms, including flexible two-way notification systems and alarms.
Additionally, we will explore the installation of devices such as silent notification of police using “panic” devices.
To accomplish these tasks the district has requested a proposal for professional assistance from Eric Lanciault, the architect who designed the improvements to the Yale Gym. A part of his work will be to facilitate conversations with school and community users, to plan these and other needed improvements. His work will begin in the summer and fall of 2014.