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School security is not straightforward. There are many constraints. (Slide). We have problems with guns, drugs, fights, theft, vandalism, but we have constraints that most industries don’t have. Schools just don’t have money in this area, especially in the past the problems weren't that big of issue. As a result, school funding for security programs is usually a very small fraction compared to a normal business or government environment.

Probably the biggest problem in schools is that they must maintain their appearance of being very open to the public. They cannot appear to be prison-like. It would be very easy to make schools very secure but nobody is going to be happy with the results.

These constraints keep school security from being straightforward. I can tell you technology is not the only answer. Technology certainly cannot solve every problem. There's a wide range of things that need to be done at most schools–sometimes all the school needs is a really good fence around it, or more people walking around.

Another problem we have is that school administrators are not trained to deal with security issues and security technologies There is no formal training before they go out to the schools. Schools also have to deal with many privacy issues. All parents are quite concerned with protecting their children in a very different environment than just 30 years ago.

Another problem is that the security personnel in schools too often are very poorly paid, often at minimum wage levels. That makes it very difficult to hold onto good, trained people.

A problem that we’ve run into many times as we visited over a hundred schools in this country is that there is no infrastructure in schools to maintain security systems even when they do have the funding for them. Some schools save for a camera system or sensor system and, when it breaks or gets stolen two years later, there’s no funding to replace it. Often there’s not even a person assigned to make sure that it’s still working properly.

We believe technologies CAN help. We did a pilot in a NM high school in 1996 — we installed cameras, upgraded intrusion sensors, provided hand-held metal detectors, provided parents with hair-analysis drug use detection kits, we taught classes to kids on security technologies, and we worked with the community. We spent a total of $42,000 on hardware, which is a very large sum of money for a school. The results were great — a 90% reduction in vandalism, a 98% reduction in theft, 75% fewer fights, and 90% fewer false fire alarms. We had 35% less truancy, mainly because we put a guard at the main entry to the campus so it’s no longer straightforward to leave.

But we learned that no two schools are alike, so there does not exist one solution or approach for school security that will work for all schools. The principal at one of the schools on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico faces different situations than the director of security for the New York City Schools.

Right now, the National Institute of Justice has funded us to draft Volume I of a set of guides for "The Effective and Appropriate application of Security Technologies in U.S. school". It’s a layman's guide to technologies so that schools do know what they’re facing when they consider metal detectors or cameras or other systems.

But more is needed. Today’s technologies do not solve all our problems. Applying surety-type approaches would lead us in several directions:

1. develop technologies that decrease or eliminate the need for humans in their use, and are so unobtrusive that they are barely noticed
2. technologies that maintain themselves, so that when a camera goes out it sends a very specific message–say Camera 3 is out, you need to take down this part and mail it to this address and we’ll replace it
3. an artificial intelligence system that would help schools to design their own security strategy
4. better design for new schools and upgrades to existing schools.

Hopefully, we can make school security less of an art, and more of a science. Thank you.

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