New Designs Turning Schools Into Fortresses

Reacting to a growing sense of urgency, designers of schools are going beyond metal detectors and closed-circuit TV surveillance to secure campuses.

New architectural plans show designs aimed at more tightly controlling the movement of students and, in times of crisis, even corralling news reporters in media command posts.

The designs, possibly the most tangible fallout from the Columbine school massacre, become more sophisticated with each new report of violence on school grounds. From Oxnard to Burbank to Rancho Cucamonga, schools--especially high school campuses--are being designed as virtual education fortresses.

At the same time, some youth advocates question the need for such changes, pointing out that juvenile crime has declined for a decade and schools are still among the safest places for children. They say school administrators are allowing their fears to create a stifling learning environment for students.

The worst school massacre in the nation’s history--in which 15 died--set the stage for the discourse.

“In the school design business, you remember where you were when Columbine hit like you remember the Challenger explosion or Kennedy being shot,” said Jim DiCamillo, a principal with WLC Architects of Rancho Cucamonga. “I was coming from Fresno.

“Surveillance cameras and security glass [were] something you hardly talked about 10 years ago. Now [school safety is] a paramount issue.”

In Los Angeles, double-glazed security glass covered by metal grills and more sensitive alarm systems have become standard features in new and renovated schools, said Mike Scinto, senior project manager for facilities with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Pasadena Unified School District is installing 31 cameras at John Muir High School to test their effectiveness. That’s twice as many cameras as Columbine officials installed after the killings there. If the cameras deter vandalism and theft, district spokesman Eric Nasarinko said, they may be installed at Pasadena’s four other high schools.

The design of a new Burbank High School, now under construction, has one major structure with a primary entrance that will funnel students past a security guard and the principal’s office--a plan that is becoming more common in new schools.

Steve Wilkerson, of HMC Architects of Ontario, said such designs protect students from “crossing a sniper’s line of sight” during a rampage.

Wilkerson said architects began only two years ago to think of planning buildings that would thwart student gunmen and would-be bombers.

He told a statewide group of school designers and administrators in March that high-profile school shootings have forced districts to prepare for the worst when building new schools.

The California School Boards Assn. also advised principals to be prepared for live television and radio interviews during a crisis.

One of the first to do so will be New Millennium High School near Santa Cruz, which plans a so-called visitors center, a small building at the front of the campus that security personnel would occupy during normal times. If a major disaster occurs, police spokesmen and reporters would be corralled there.

DiCamillo, its designer, said the idea is to have streamlined communications from a single point to avoid the media chaos he observed at Columbine.

Some believe school districts should tighten campus security even more.

Wilkerson said in the near future, principals at new schools will be able to lock down their campuses at the onset of a crisis.

Jarado Blue, a consultant, was police chief of Pasadena schools when the district decided to install and test the cameras at Muir High School. He frequently speaks to other education officials about the threats of violence on campuses that he describes as “soft targets.”

Schools should be built as securely as malls or banks, he said.

Juvenile Justice Scholars Question Security

“We need to make the criminal element know we’re paying attention to them. We spend a lot of money protecting our property, but we look for morality alone to protect our kids,” Blue said. “Or at least that’s the way you feel until you lose one.”

Juvenile justice scholars question the need for some of the new school security plans, in light of the decline in youth violence in recent years. As the number of on-campus incidents have decreased, hard-line reactions to them have increased, they say.

“The problem with building all these ‘hard targets’ is no one knows what is too much,” said Jason Ziedenberg, a researcher at the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The nonprofit published a study that shows that most Americans--including school administrators--overestimate the threat of violence at school.

“When you start putting up fences and putting cameras around a school, it can cause undue restriction on the students and create a culture of control that does more harm than good,” Ziedenberg said.

LAUSD’s Scinto said anything more than perimeter fencing “becomes kind of oppressive. We’re not trying to be oppressive.”

Some students also question whether the bars and locks installed to keep criminals out can make the school seem like a prison.

“Are they locking them out, or locking us in?” asked Michael Cole, a junior at Pasadena’s Marshall Fundamental School. His comments drew nods of agreement from four of his friends gathered outside of a locked gate.