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School Safety & Security
Tim’s Tips
School Security Can Go Too Far
When safety measures prevent parents from getting involved, it's time to reassess.
The more I read about school security trends, the more I fear that volunteerism in schools is going to be an unintended casualty of this growing obsession with locked doors and background checks.
That will be a shame; there has to be a happy medium.
Like a ball rolling down a hill, the school security focus seems to be gaining speed. It started with locked front doors to schools (“buzz me in, please”), moved toward sign-in/sign-out sheets and nametags, and now seems to be heading inexorably toward background checks for all school volunteers. What’s next? Armed guards? I call it the Fortress School.
Ugh.
In a day when recruiting volunteers is harder than ever, placing huge hurdles in front of volunteers will only make things worse. At our PTO Today conferences this past spring, some of the best involvement ideas centered on reaching out to reluctant parents and parents new to the school with a very simple invitation: “Could you help us in any way for just one hour?”
The idea behind that simple invitation is to introduce non-involved parents to the school community personally and carefully, and to alleviate the fear that volunteering once will lead to endless weeks and months counting fundraising dollars and baking cookies. A key behind the concept is to tell the prospective volunteers proactively that you won’t ask them for anything else—just that one hour. It’s a great concept; the fact is that a good percentage of those new volunteers will volunteer again without your asking, as long as their first experience is a good one.
But now imagine that situation at the Fortress School. “Hi, Mrs. Jones. Paula PTO President here; I was wondering if you could come down and help out for just one hour at our fair next week? I promise that’s all we’ll ask of you this semester. Involvement is so important for your child and for our school. You will? That’s great. We’ll just need a urine sample, four references (including one from your pastor), and a little bit of DNA. Tuesday is blood-check day, if you could just pop by the school for a few minutes. And we’ll just need a picture and a passport.”
Double ugh.
As a former teacher and avowed PTO watcher, I can tell you with passion that the environment at school means almost as much in the learning process as the actual curriculum. That environment is set the moment students walk on campus. The look and feel of the campus, the welcoming nature of the entrance, and yes, the open participation by volunteers and involved parents. If the Fortress School is for you, then you might as well keep the kids at home. Extracurriculars and speakers and recess and evening events and fairs and field trips are all integral parts of the school experience. They all rely on volunteerism and PTOs. We can’t sacrifice those items.
I often say that great teachers are responsible for teaching the ABCs and great PTOs create the environment in which those teachers can excel at teaching the ABCs. We don’t need to add the FBI and the CIA to that acronym mix.
If your district is moving toward the Fortress School mentality, I’ve got some advice. First, make sure that your parent group has a voice in setting security rules and procedures. There is no one better than parents to set rules for their children’s safety. Don’t be told otherwise.
Second, try to separate those areas that do present higher risks from those areas that do not. Volunteer roles that involve parents alone with individual children or small groups of children are different from, say, selling doughnuts and coffee in front of school in the morning. Rather than having one set of quite strict regulations on all volunteering, your group can advocate for different levels of security. A reading tutor or even a PTO president might require a more careful check than a one-time volunteer at your fall fair.
As a PTO leader, you need to advocate for policies that allow your group to do its work. There will be folks at the decisionmaking table who argue for increased security and for every possible restriction on volunteers. If you don’t speak for involvement and volunteer-friendly policies, who will? Safe schools and schools that welcome and encourage involvement don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
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