The Wake County Public School System has selected five security projects to request funding for this fall.
School system officials told WRAL News the projects are confidential, because the school system doesn’t want the wrong people to know what security weaknesses some schools may have. They declined to state what the security goals of the projects would be but said the projects would be physical security upgrades that could take place at every school..
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The Wake County school board discussed the security projects during a committee closed session Tuesday afternoon.
School system officials said they would study the size and scope of the projects. Then they will come back to the board in the fall with more specific requests for funding and competitive bidding.
Wake County provides the school system with about $5 million each year in security funding that can be used for things like security cameras or fences.
Facilities Chief Mark Strickland said that may not be enough to cover these five projects.
The school board will recommend a budget to Wake County this spring. Security measures aren’t currently listed among the board’s priorities.
The five projects would make up the first phase of a host of future security projects the district hopes to do over the next several years.
“This work’s going to be going on for years,” said Russ Smith, the school system’s security director. “There’s a large number of recommendations on how to do things and we have to sort through them.”
Those recommendations cover physical security, as well as ways to improve security through operational changes, like emergency plans, training or reviewing event procedures, Smith said.
The five projects come from recommendations made by the School Safety Advisory Council, a group of former law enforcement and security officers who audit schools. The board contracted with the group to study its schools back in 2019 and is still working with the group on acting on those recommendations, which came out in late 2021 and have since been evaluated at every school and resulted in some policy updates.
Recommendations included a new visitor management system, emergency and reunification planning, establishing a security department and a district-wide threat assessment team, employee training, and a volunteer policy, among other things. The school board plans to vote on a contract for visitor management next month and has approved policies. The district has a security department, led by Smith.
School construction norms have changed over the years, and Strickland said the district ideally wants to establish a baseline of security features for all current and new schools and then ensure all schools meet that baseline.