Burlingame school safety initiative due to the increase in school violence across our nation and enormous pressure to assure school patrons that the staff and students are safe, schools are faced with…

Burlingame school safety initiative due to the increase in school violence across our nation and enormous pressure to assure school patrons that the staff and students are safe, schools are faced with prioritizing local funds towards safety initiatives. However, when local funds are simply not available, districts must make valiant efforts to find a monetary source in which to secure their campuses. Hence, grants such as justgrants are a viable avenue to assist schools with such needs. The burlingame school district is located in a rural community in northeast kansas. IT is a 1A school district with limited funding due to low enrollment numbers. Due to this limited budget, very few initiatives have been able to be funded to secure the campus. As a new superintendent, i am alarmed with the lack of security that is in place at the school district i have been charged to lead. I have been able to change most, but not all, of the entryways with a FOB system rather than the standard keys and locks. I have also installed phones in all of the classrooms to increase the communication capacity which had never been done prior to my arrival. These are the only safety measures currently in place in my school district. Although i am proud of the direction we are heading, we are a far CRY from being able to say confidently that our staff and students are safe. At burlingame, i wish to propose new entries that are secured with an alarmed system. We reside in one building that houses infants in a daycare to seniors in high school. There are two main entrances: one at the elementary level and one at the high shcool level. We need to completely reconfigure and rebuild these entry spaces so that patrons must come through secured areas prior to entering the school building. Other entryways and doors also need to be secured through an alarm system that would prevent uninvited guests from entering the school. Preferrably, the school's resource officer should be housed in the main office of the high school, so space for this need would also be taken into consideration. Currently, there is no alarm system, and anyone can ring a bell to be allowed into the building. Once in, visitors have full access to the school buildings and the people withing the buildings, which is extremely unsafe. The cameras on the buzzer system are inadequate, and often times, people are buzzed into the buildings with very little identification or information regarding their visit. An upgrade in security is dire for our school district. In a rural community, students and families have access to firearms. Many of our families own firearms for hunting purposes. Easy access to weapons increases our need to improve security significantly as well as immediatley. As a school leader, i feel compelled to better security at our school campus. We simply have no choice but to respond to this national crisis and investigate any and all avenues available for support regarding efforts to assure students and staff are safe while at school. The burlingame school safety initiative will not only bring peace of mind to the school community but will serve as a preventative measure as IT relates to school violance. Currently, our school district is extremely vulnerable to violence; action must be taken to prevent any sort of school tragedy.