As fears of shootings grow, WCSD speeds up school safety upgrades

The Washoe County School District is expediting plans to build single-point entries in elementary schools in the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17.

The safety measures will create a single locked entry checkpoint at an additional 24 elementary schools around the district.

Joe Gabica, chief facilities management officer, said construction of these safety measures will be complete by 2019, one year earlier than originally expected.

“I sure am glad that they’re moving it forward because the safety of our students is of the utmost importance," Olga Perez Flora, who has a kindergartner at Rollan Melton Elementary School, told the Reno Gazette Journal on Wednesday.

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Flora spoke to the Washoe County School Board during their meeting Tuesday afternoon. She told them that her daughter’s school has little more than a “cute sign” standing between people entering the school and classrooms full of students.

Melton is one of 24 elementary schools in the district that still do not have a single point of entry. It was originally slated to have one installed by summer 2020.

Flora said she and other parents thought 2020 was just too far away; they wanted their kids to be better protected as soon as possible.

The school district, it turns out, was thinking the same thing.

Nine schools will have a single point of entry built this summer and the remaining 15 will be done in summer 2019.

District spokesperson Riley Sutton stopped Gabica from sharing the construction schedule with media who’d gathered for an impromptu press conference on Wednesday, citing “chief of police concerns.”

“It’s not something we can hide but it’s not something we want to proactively put out there ourselves,” Sutton said.

The Reno Gazette Journal has submitted a public records request for the construction schedule.

Gabica said the order in which schools are being given single points of entry was determined by “age and (police) response time.”

He added that schools the district was most concerned about, such as campuses that have had incidents in the past, have already had the new entry system installed.

Gabica said he’d been approached by the district’s Safe and Healthy Schools Commission in December about expediting the installations, but the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School really served as a catalyst to speed up the process.

“I’m not going to say we’re ahead of it — because we really weren’t — but we were taking a look at it. … This was just basically the tipping point where we said, “Well, we’ve really got to push this up,’” he said.

The remaining single-point entries are among several safety upgrades the district is installing in its schools. Others include:

Door lock upgrades: These will allow teachers to lock their classrooms from the inside. Six schools still need the new locks.

Closed circuit television cameras: Seven middle schools just completed; systems currently being replaced at Hug and Wooster high schools.

Perimeter fencing: All elementary schools now have secured perimeters; middle schools are next.

Re-numbering doors: Primarily for first responders, a new door numbering system would be consistent throughout the district so police and emergency crews could locate rooms quickly.

Public address systems : The newest project on the list, school public address systems are being evaluated to see what needs to be upgraded.

Gabica hopes that many of these projects — aside from the door numbering and public address systems — will be done or near completion by 2019.

The district has been working on upgrading school safety features since 2011, albeit with a few halts thanks to budget problems.

Gabica said installing the single point of entry at most of the remaining elementary schools is going to be no small project. Often the district will have to add an addition to the existing school building to accomplish the job.

The projects are extensive enough that the bulk of the work must be done over the summer when school is not in session.

It’s not funding that’s causing the installations to be drawn out over the next two years, it’s time.

“I can’t get started today and just be ready to go this summer,” Gabica said, detailing the extensive permitting, bidding and awarding process of construction. “There’s just not enough time there; there’s just too many steps.”

But while elementary and middle schools are getting perimeter fencing and single point entries, Gabica said installing the same features in Washoe County high schools is a “difficult thing to do.”

“There’s so many comings and goings, it’s almost like a college campus; it’s a difficult thing to control,” he said. “We’re not exactly sure how that is going to happen in the future.”

The majority of the high schools don’t have designs that are conducive to a single point entry, he said, using Hug and Wooster high schools as an example.

Those campuses use 8-10 separate buildings and would be difficult to create a single point of entry into.

“There’s problems when you have more than one building,” Gabica said. “High schools become more like college campuses than elementary or middle (schools).”

A handful of other campuses, with campus designs that are more enclosed like Sparks High School and the Academy of Arts, Careers and Technology, already have single points of entry and secured perimeters.

The district’s three newest high schools — Damonte Ranch, Spanish Springs and North Valleys — also have designs that are conducive to single point entry.

But Gabica said the district does intend to find a way to better secure its high schools. That project likely wouldn’t happen until after 2019, when the remaining single point of entry projects are completed at elementary schools.

“What we do there, we’re not certain yet,” he said.