Teachers share concern over outdated locks in event of emergencies
A secure classroom door is the first line of defense for two of the most life-threatening disasters that can happen at school: a fire and a shooting.But older schools have doors with an ancient lock system, which has ironically caused the security measures for both disasters to compete with each other, and teachers are nervous about it.To get more news about security lock systems, you can visit securamsys.com official website.
“Kids aren’t dying in fires, they’re dying in school shootings,” said Creed Archibald, a teacher at Highland High School who said he and his coworkers have run into the modern-day security dilemma.
“We had 46 kids killed on school grounds by gunfire just in 2022, and there hasn’t been a kid that’s died in a fire at school since 1958,” he added.Most schools built before 2000 have classroom doors that only lock from the hallway. Studies have shown that it causes a vulnerability during shootings.
"I have to go out in the hall and spend an extra 30 to 60 seconds locking my door,” Archibald said.But replacing the locks on each classroom door is a massive expense for school districts, so many of them have tried to compromise with door-stop tools like the "Lock Blok."
The Lock Blok allows teachers to keep doors locked from the outside, allowing kids to come and go. However, “if God forbid, we suddenly hear shots, all we do is move [it] a half inch to the right and the door closes and now it’s locked,” Archibald said.
However, this cheap, simple system is something the state fire marshal recently said was a violation and had to be taken down."The doors are required to close and latch for fire safety,” said Ted Black, Utah State Fire Marshal.
Most classroom doors are fire-rated, meaning they are designed to keep smoke and flames out of the room during a fire, but that only works if they are latched shut. Door stops like the Lock Blok would make the system useless in a fire.Black said that devices like the Lock Blok have been found and taken down in pretty much every school district in Utah.
Some people would say school shootings are a bigger risk than fires. In Utah there have been five deadly gun related incidents on school grounds since 1996.They’ve never experienced a large fire in a school,” Black said, “and so it's obvious they would want to make that the priority, [but] you don’t negate one level of safety to increase another level of safety.”
While the fire code has been successful at preventing any deadly fires from occurring at school, the devices that make teachers feel safer violate it, and that has caused teachers like Archibald to struggle to find ways around it.
"So now what we have teachers doing is putting garbage cans or having to leave their door unlocked so kids can get in and out or having to keep their door locked all the time and having to have kids knocking to get in the room like it's some kind of fortress,” he said.
However, school districts like Alpine have managed to find the funds to satisfy both requirements.
“We went and changed all the doors out so you have the push button lock,” said David Stephenson, the Executive Director of Communications for Alpine, “so now if the teacher hears there’s a lockdown all they have to do is come over to the door push the lock and it locks the door.”
A secure classroom door is the first line of defense for two of the most life-threatening disasters that can happen at school: a fire and a shooting.But older schools have doors with an ancient lock system, which has ironically caused the security measures for both disasters to compete with each other, and teachers are nervous about it.To get more news about security lock systems, you can visit securamsys.com official website.
“Kids aren’t dying in fires, they’re dying in school shootings,” said Creed Archibald, a teacher at Highland High School who said he and his coworkers have run into the modern-day security dilemma.
“We had 46 kids killed on school grounds by gunfire just in 2022, and there hasn’t been a kid that’s died in a fire at school since 1958,” he added.Most schools built before 2000 have classroom doors that only lock from the hallway. Studies have shown that it causes a vulnerability during shootings.
"I have to go out in the hall and spend an extra 30 to 60 seconds locking my door,” Archibald said.But replacing the locks on each classroom door is a massive expense for school districts, so many of them have tried to compromise with door-stop tools like the "Lock Blok."
The Lock Blok allows teachers to keep doors locked from the outside, allowing kids to come and go. However, “if God forbid, we suddenly hear shots, all we do is move [it] a half inch to the right and the door closes and now it’s locked,” Archibald said.
However, this cheap, simple system is something the state fire marshal recently said was a violation and had to be taken down."The doors are required to close and latch for fire safety,” said Ted Black, Utah State Fire Marshal.
Most classroom doors are fire-rated, meaning they are designed to keep smoke and flames out of the room during a fire, but that only works if they are latched shut. Door stops like the Lock Blok would make the system useless in a fire.Black said that devices like the Lock Blok have been found and taken down in pretty much every school district in Utah.
Some people would say school shootings are a bigger risk than fires. In Utah there have been five deadly gun related incidents on school grounds since 1996.They’ve never experienced a large fire in a school,” Black said, “and so it's obvious they would want to make that the priority, [but] you don’t negate one level of safety to increase another level of safety.”
While the fire code has been successful at preventing any deadly fires from occurring at school, the devices that make teachers feel safer violate it, and that has caused teachers like Archibald to struggle to find ways around it.
"So now what we have teachers doing is putting garbage cans or having to leave their door unlocked so kids can get in and out or having to keep their door locked all the time and having to have kids knocking to get in the room like it's some kind of fortress,” he said.
However, school districts like Alpine have managed to find the funds to satisfy both requirements.
“We went and changed all the doors out so you have the push button lock,” said David Stephenson, the Executive Director of Communications for Alpine, “so now if the teacher hears there’s a lockdown all they have to do is come over to the door push the lock and it locks the door.”