Q&A: Building Safety into the Schoolhouse Walls

Facilities management in schools is about more than just the classrooms or gymnasiums, windows and doors, or all the other brick, mortar, and physical components that help create a learning environment for students. Facilities—and their ability to keep students, staff, and others safe—rely on people and training them to understand the impact they have on security solutions like access control, locking mechanisms, maintenance, and planning. So, while people can be the biggest threat to facilities management, they can also be the biggest asset.

Brandon Payne is the executive director for the National Council on School Facilities. The nonprofit organization represents school facilities personnel and leaders throughout the United States, with active members from 21 different U.S. states. Prior to his current role, Payne was the assistant state superintendent for Alabama, overseeing K-12 facilities, transportation, and child nutrition programs throughout the state.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Security Management (SM). In your role as executive director, what do you see as the primary pain points when it comes to school safety today?

Brandon Payne. I think it would be a lack of overall facilities planning. We’ve got to start looking at events that have happened five years, 10 years, 20 years, and almost 30 years ago, events that were related to school safety. The disconnect to me is with capital planning. Say I want a five-year capital plan and a 10-year capital plan where I want to build or renovate buildings. We look at educational attainment in terms of our adequacy, what we want the building to do. Is it going to be a pre-K center, an intermediate center, a high school, or a comprehensive high school? We look at all those things, but you rarely ever see the conversation about embedded safety. When it comes to facilities, it’s easy for people to say, “Well, let’s harden the exterior, let’s put in fencing, let’s put in magnetic locks, let’s do all those things.” There’s feasibility for some of these things, but the lack of long-term planning presents an issue for dealing with safety issues.

I think the other piece where we don’t do a good job is we don’t think of within the facilities. How do we train the people to do the right thing every day? Like, not put a rock in the door. How do you train them not to leave the windows unlocked or to even set their rooms up in such a fashion that it inhibits the entrance of somebody you don’t want and the gives the ability to secure the ones you do?

SM. You mentioned a lack of coordinated planning and training. Which is the one that keeps you up at night, and why?

Payne. Training. It always comes down to people.

SM. Can you elaborate a little?

Payne. Sure. So, you can build the newest modern school you want, have all the correct HVAC that’s going to monitor air pressure in the building so that you know all your doors and your locks and everything is going to function the way they should. You can have the best. A lot of times when we think about school safety and security, obviously most people’s thoughts go to shootings, right? But what about fire hazards? It’s a school safety issue if the fire suppression system is not working correctly.

In my previous role, we had to send in a contractor to replace the float tank for a fire suppression system because for a period of at least three years no one in the maintenance department in that school system had opened the door to realize that the coupler at the bottom was leaking. And when the coupler wasn’t replaced for three years, it rotted out the joint. And when the joint rusted and rotted out, what would have been a plumber’s tape putty fix for $2.50 became a $37,000 repair. It’s things like that.

What does the data tell us is the best thing to do? We need to understand how we secure our building and can maintain it. I’ve seen schools pay lots of money for automatic door closures, magnetic locks, alarms, but they never check their HVAC system, or they don’t realize that it’s pressurizing the building three degrees more than it should. Therefore, half your doors will not close and you’re not also doing your monthly checklist when you talk about school security. How many months in a row have we opened every door in a building that had an automatic closure on it and counted the seconds that it took it to close and made sure that it was gauged appropriately? So, that’s kind of why it leads me to say “people.” The building is an inanimate thing that’s going to do what it does, but it’s only going to do what it’s allowed to do when the people do what they should.

You’ve got to know how these security measures perform and then you’ve also got to know your HVAC systems, especially the external components—are they in a secure location? Because that’s one of the things nobody thinks about. It’s like, if you really want to mess with the humans, the kids, the teachers, and everybody in a building, one of the easiest ways to do this is to mess with the HVAC system. I can crank up the heat, but even worse than that, I can put chemicals in the airflow.

SM. So, then how do you see facilities personnel and practices supporting current school safety efforts?

Payne. It goes back to the planning piece. As we plan and we put in a five-year capital plan, we also have our maintenance program. And so, the two are both heavily vested in the facilities because we’re going to build new buildings.

Lots of times when we build new buildings, especially at the school district level, we fail to realize that we should hold 3 to 4 percent of our operating revenue of the cost of that building in order to maintain it where it needs to be. So, we’re happy that we’re building the new $50 million elementary school that we haven’t had in 40 years, but we’re not accounting for the fact that we need to put $1.5 million aside every year to maintain that building the way it should be. That leads us to a lack of maintenance.

SM. With that concept of both people and planning in mind, what role do you see facilities fulfilling an effort to balance education with a welcoming learning environment while remaining secure?

Payne. I think the best security is a security that no one sees, meaning that it has been built inside of the building. So, say we’ve all put up yellow bollards in the parking lot, but we make sure that thing is buried eight feet in the ground with reinforced steel or concrete. Then maybe we paint it in the school colors so it blends in, but it will absolutely stop a vehicle from running past it. Those kinds of things, but even in the interior. I think the answer for facilities is what do we do going forward—whether it be in renovation or new construction—that provides the greatest level of security that people don’t know about.

SM. And how do you convince others that these aspects of facilities are worth the investment? Whether that’s a time investment when it comes to planning or a financial investment when it comes to swapping out aging elements for new, more modern ones, or times and money when it comes to training—how do you convince others that this is what needs to happen and is worth it?

Payne. A couple of points come to mind. One, I think that you’ve got to emphasize to folks that it’s far more than just security. We’re talking about the overall education of your child from the time they walk in the door in their earliest years to the time they graduate from high school. And what does that look like, both in providing the best atmosphere from a facility standpoint for educational adequacy and attainment, and then also ensuring their safety through that. So, I really think it comes down to a messaging thing. You’ve got to put that in there because one of the biggest things that you see happen is somebody comes out with a new development, a new tool, a new thing, and everybody’s on it. But what is sustainable? What does sustainable look like? What can we put in place that we know will do it? You can only go so far with dollars you spend on a facility before the facility has failed because the people didn’t do what they should. I think that’s where you can get the hook in.

The second point is you’ve got to bring that training piece. You can appoint a district-wide safety coordinator, have a safety team at every school. To me, laws bring compliance for the most part. People see a law, they want to be compliant, especially when you’re talking about educators. But compliance isn’t necessarily the motivating thing.

It almost becomes a cliché—whether it be superintendents or principals or whoever: “Student safety is the priority. Student safety before all else. Student safety before learning.” We say that, but then that has to become actionable. It can’t be just the thing you say when you start. We want all our kids to achieve at the greatest level, but student safety is first. I think where we have to move to is what does the accountability look like to that being actionable? What is school safety? You can’t tell me you want all kids to be safe and that it’s the first priority if your actions don’t back that up.

School safety and security efforts are as multifaceted and complex as the students, staff, and families that make up a school and its community. For this series on K-12 security and operations, Security Management spoke with different stakeholders and professionals who are invested in making schools safer and vying to create a learning environment where students and educators can focus on learning. Explore the rest of the series here. 

Sara Mosqueda is associate editor for Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or send her an email at [email protected].