Ryan Quinlan ’14: In light of both the ongoing investigation into the situation involving an unidentified photographer in the Dixon Athletic Center and the recent Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS) school safety meeting held at Episcopal, Scholium decided to update the community on EA’s evolving security procedures.
ADVIS represents over 130 schools in the region, many of which recently convened at Episcopal in order to discuss school security policies.
As Mark Notaro, Director of Facilities and Operations, stated, “We’ve always taken security seriously here. Certainly with Sandy Hook and [then] with the unknown photographer, we decided to revisit how we do things here and… evaluate how we operate.”
Scholium sat in on an ADVIS session specifically for day schools and high schools. This particular session was designed to facilitate conversation between school administrators.
This session repeatedly referenced Episcopal’s own Emergency Action Plan, which was drafted by Notaro in 2009. Notaro stressed the importance of school security plans meeting the requirements of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as Episcopal’s plan does.
Following the shooting at Sandy Hook, Notaro recalled, “[Episcopal’s school administration] talked about bringing in an outside consultant for an independent third-party evaluation.” Currently, Episcopal is still in the process of vetting the various firms to find one that best fits the school.
Notaro explained, “We want them to come in and look at how we operate as a school and then look at it in the context of how the school functions. We want them to understand…the culture here and that we want to provide the safest experience in the culture of our school.”
The school has also decided to lock many of the exterior doors to the Crawford Campus Center during the school day.
Notaro noted, “We looked at those doors [in the campus center] and said there’s no reason to keep them unlocked during the course of the day.”
He continued, “[For] the half-hour window in the morning [some campus center doors are] going to be unlocked… and then locked down the rest of the day.”
These measures mirror the current policies of Episcopal’s lower school in which all exterior doors are locked from 8:30AM until afternoon dismissal.
Another topic of discussion at the ADVIS meeting was the possibility of issuing students ID cards, which could be electronically swiped at entryways in order to gain access to academic buildings otherwise closed to the public.
“Some peer schools have already gone that route,” Notaro noted. “Haverford School does that. We just found out that after spring break [Germantown Academy] is going to introduce that [access card system] and provide IDs to all the students.”
Notaro noted that, at Episcopal, “We’re talking about that internally right now, weighing the positives and negatives.”
At the ADVIS meeting, it was noted that, while ID cards may be effective for preventing minor incidents, they would likely be unable to protect against larger threats, such as a shooter on campus.
Security in the athletic center is one of the most difficult problems since this building experiences more traffic from outside visitors.
Notaro noted, “We invite parents, opposing parents, fans, refs into these games and post information of the website. As such, properly monitoring incoming and outgoing traffic is more difficult…a solution is forthcoming.”