Editorial: School security is too important to neglect

There are places that a school district can cut corners. None is pleasant.

Trim things off the maintenance budget, and you can set up bigger building projects later on. Short the curriculum, and you get poor test scores and unprepared students. Whatever gets cut one place costs in another.

But these days, security may be the most critical.

The days of open doors and free-roaming students are long gone. After the Columbine shooting in 1999, there was a change. The way doors locked and the way access was granted changed. In newer buildings, offices were placed differently to act more like gatehouses.

As more shootings have happened, security has been refined. Technology has been a big part of that. Cameras have become more important, as well as the ability for law enforcement to access feeds from outside the building if necessary. The shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 taught us that it was important to have as much information on an aggressor as possible.

And so it is alarming to hear how inadequate a school’s security can still be.

“Every (security) system that we have is outdated,” Burrell School District Superintendent Shannon Wagner told her board.

An executive session protected the particulars of the discussion of a $1.27 million investment, but cameras were part of it.

“Updating the cameras is imperative here,” Lower Burrell police Chief John Marhefka said. “Well-positioned cameras deter wrongdoing on campus. There is a need for this.”

It’s not cheap, but there is also potential help. Wagner is hoping a $450,000 competitive grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency could mitigate costs. But school security has become a multibillion dollar industry because of the evolving need.

Burrell isn’t alone in concerns about safety. Hempfield Area School District also has grappled with security issues in the wake of a gun issue at the high school. Pittsburgh Public Schools has had students shot outside its buildings. These are not plans for things that might never happen. They are precautions for things that sometimes already have.

Neglecting a school’s roof risks a flood. That’s terrible and expensive. Neglecting school security can have a much higher cost.