SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — The Central Valley School District is implementing major security upgrades at five schools before students return this fall, creating secure entry vestibules that will require all visitors to check in with office staff before accessing school buildings.
The renovations, funded through a capital levy, represent the second phase of a district-wide security initiative. Five schools received similar upgrades last summer, bringing the total to 10 schools with enhanced entrance security.
At Bowdish Middle School, the current system allows visitors to be buzzed in through double doors and walk down long hallways without necessarily checking in at the main office.
“Once they allowed them in, you had to cross a long hallway in order to enter into the main office and check in with the secretaries and sign in,” said Eric Roal, principal of Bowdish Middle School. “Which then, of course, allows individuals to either walk up the North Hall or South Hall or down the main center hall, and not even enter into the office.”
The new secure entry vestibules will change that process entirely. Visitors will enter through an exterior door into a contained space, then wait to be buzzed into the main office by secretaries before gaining access to the rest of the school building.
The upgraded security system also includes an emergency lockdown feature that gives office staff immediate control over building access. Secretaries have access to a button that can instantly lock all interior doors, containing any unwanted visitors to the entrance vestibule.
“What the secretaries also have access to is, a button that they can hit. And what it does is it locks all of the doors so that the only place that somebody that we don’t necessarily want here can go is out the entrance that they came into,” Roal explained. “It locks all of the other hallway entrances and makes it so that it is a contained environment.”
Greenacres Middle School, which received its security upgrade last year, has already seen the benefits of the new system.
“Not just the physical space itself, but just the visibility that we have in front to know who’s coming in and out of our building, which has been great,” said Quinn LeSage, principal of Greenacres Middle School.
Students at both schools have responded positively to the security improvements.
“It’s nice that when, like, I get picked up by my parents, they’re not just, like, standing in the school waiting for me,” Michele Henderson, an eighth-grader at Greenacres Middle School, said.
At Bowdish Middle School, eighth-grader Natalie Dial views the upcoming changes as beneficial for the school community.
“I think the construction and the security upgrades are definitely going to be an improvement for Bowdish,” Dial said.
Once the five remaining projects are completed by fall, the district will have secure entrances at all but one school. The exception is a facility that only serves students once per week.
The security upgrades represent a significant investment in student and staff safety, ensuring that all visitors must be properly screened and authorized before entering school buildings where children learn and work.
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