Published: October 24, 2006 11:31 pm         

No price on student, school safety

How safe are our schools?

People across the country have been asking that question in the wake of three recent deadly shootings at schools. Enid Public Schools officials were included in that group, and the school board has decided to spend more than $7,000 to assess security at five of the largest schools in the district.

School board members also gave administrators the go-ahead to replace locks on classroom doors. SAFE School committees for each site in the district have been developing recommendations for enhancing safety and security, and a number of the recommendations have included new locks. The majority of classroom doors now can be locked from the inside, but some can’t while still meeting fire codes. Those doors must be left unlocked unless they can be unlocked in a single motion.

The security assessment will be done by two former U.S. Secret Service agents — who run Edmond-based Secure School Solutions — at Enid High School, Emerson, Waller and Longfellow junior highs and Coolidge Elementary School. Those schools are either the largest or the most difficult to secure.

Administrators will take what is learned from the evaluation and apply it to buildings throughout the district.

We won’t know what recommendations come about until the security assessment is done, so we don’t know what the cost associated with those recommendations will be.

However, we know school safety and has become a priority throughout the country. Enid, and all of northwest Oklahoma for that matter, is not exempt.

We’ve been fortunate there have not been any incidents, but we can’t talk ourselves into believing it won’t happen here.

Big schools and small schools have been targeted. One of the most recent incidences happened at a small, isolated Amish one-room school in Pennsylvania. That alone should tell everyone no school district is immune.

The assessment Enid school officials are seeking is worth the cost. You can’t put a price on safety.