Another Answer to Shootings: Design Safer Schools

Shortly after the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, New York lawmakers passed the SAFE Act, one of the strictest gun laws in the country. While the legislation continues to draw criticism from gun rights activists, the New York State chapter of the American Institute of Architects has gone a different route by trying to design safer schools.  

“When you think about school safety and security, it goes way beyond having an active shooter in the school,” Randolph Collins, a member of AIA New York State, told City & State.

In the wake of the Newtown shootings, AIA New York State developed a six-page checklist to follow while designing schools to promote school safety. For example, schools are being planned or renovated with fewer entrances and exits to help monitor who is exiting and entering the building and using technology to make sure doors are keyless and can be locked in case of an emergency.

Other ideas to promote school safety include buzzers underneath teachers’ desks to alert the police and other staff members of an emergency and automatic doors that immediately lock and cordon off student areas.

“This has certainly been a trend,” Collins said. “We have been incorporating these, basically, getting hired to do these security and safety assessments.”

Some school districts, which are taking the lead without waiting for state action, have even developed systems where visitors have to scan an identification card to gain access, and the system will alert school officials if a visitor is a convicted sex offender. Even an idea as simple as putting the classroom numbers outside the building so that emergency professionals know where classrooms are can drastically help in an emergency situation.  

Not since 13 people were killed in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 has there been such a marked change in how architects design schools, Collins said.

"That has had an incredible impact on school design and that’s going to raise awareness for the need to make schools safer more than any incident since Columbine,” he said.