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What initiatives is your district working on security-wise?
Kayfes: We started a program that reduced our false alarms by 80 percent. We really made a huge impact on our false alarm reduction, and now we’re really trying to push for another reduction in our false alarms. You’ve always got to do an alarm analysis to find out what’s causing your false alarms. We found that the athletic staff and sports personnel were creating 90 percent of the false alarms.

Do false alarms cost us? Yes. They cost us in our relationship with law enforcement.

We figured the [monetary] cost could be overridden by hiring one staff member to be responsible for the arming and disarming of buildings and ensuring that there were no false alarms. There was a 100 percent reduction in false alarms on weekend activities at that school.

Does it cost the district much money to implement that initiative?
Kayfes: We have a policy where anytime a community member is at our school, we have a school representative present as well. Oftentimes, the community members have to pay for that. Sports typically don’t have to pay for the person in the building, so during certain sporting events, we ended up paying for a person that might not have had to have been there. The cost is minimal compared to the false alarm damage.

We’ve taken other steps throughout the district to prevent false alarms. In some of our schools, we’ve come up with a zero zone alarm. In some of our buildings we have areas that we would like to zone off, for instance, athletics. So we create zones. If we create too many zones, people trigger false alarms by entering into the wrong zone.

We’ve segregated the zones, and created a zero zone. What that means is the corridors that connect the zones aren’t necessarily armed. As long as students don’t go into a locked zone area, then they won’t create a false alarm. We found in one of our high schools that this system was [responsible for] nearly a 70 percent reduction [in false alarms].

How would you go about getting funds to hire additional officers?
Kayfes: The district has a $5.7 million shortfall, which is a product of the economic hardship we’re in, so it’s hard to maintain.

Some of that money is available for us to use on our substitute campus security and have them focus on a problem or situation. When we feel the problem is under control, we take them out. We have a contingent of retired law enforcement officers who love helping us out.

What’s your biggest accomplishment with the district?
Kayfes: One of the big accomplishments that we’re starting here is our threat assessment crisis response team county-wide. We’re laying down the ground rules, and we’re very pleased about how this is all going to wrap up. We’re inviting law enforcement, the juvenile department, the department of human services, school counselors and psychologists.

We want to provide team expertise into the evaluation of threats. If you’re on this team, you’ve had the training and you’ve made several decisions in the past about threat assessments. We also want to bring expertise about the threat itself.

In my opinion, there i
s no better job in the world than to protect kids, but by the same token, it requires a lot of responsibility. In every decision you make, you have to decide if it will be safe for the students.

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Ashley Willis is associate editor for Campus Safety. She can be reached at ashley.willis@bobit.com.

Keywords: community policing, false alarms, fire alarms, budget, funding

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