By Dan Reider

August 18, 2025

As we head towards the start of another school year, we are excited for the children who will be attending those schools. Although not all schools are to the level we would like for them to be for our children – facilities, teachers, programs- most offer a great environment for learning, socializing, nutrition, athletics, and a wide variety of programs and clubs. With the start of the school year, there is also some anxiety felt by the parents with school age kids.

Security in schools has gotten to be a greater concern seemingly each year. In recent years we hear more about school shootings. While any school shooting is horrible, the news just seemed to make it appear so much worse and so much more prevalent than it really was in our schools. In actuality, school shootings are in the news more because they are actually occurring more frequently then in past years. In 2024 there were more than 80 school shootings and more than 800,000 violent incidents in schools in the United States.

It was more than a decade ago when I and fellow school designers (architects and engineers) had discussions related to school security and whether or not K-12 schools were headed towards being constructed more and more like a correctional facility- not to keep bad people in but to keep bad people out. It did not matter whether we were working on school projects in Aiken County, Greenville County, Horry County or wherever, the conversations regarding school security were all the same.

At that time, schools were being designed with some security features such as school security cameras and more schools include a school resource officer (SRO) to help with any safety issues within the school or on school grounds. Then we started to see metal detectors at entrances to high schools. Now we see metal detectors installed in middle schools and even some elementary schools. Other changes were being made including security cameras on buses, automatic locking entrance doors and the students participating in intruder alert drills.

In more recent times, schools have been adding automatic locking doors on classrooms, auditoriums, cafeterias, libraries and really any place where students could gather. More schools have decided that automatic locking doors were not sufficiently secure and the doors must be bulletproof with bulletproof glass. Students are also being asked to report any suspicious activities observed or in emails or texts.

Our vision years ago about schools becoming mini correctional facilities from a construction standpoint is about there. About the only things missing are that the buses are not bulletproof and the schools do not have fencing with barb wire around the entire school Although it is my sincere hope that we will not ever be seeing such things, I am not willing to bet on it. It makes me and others sad that we have gotten to where this is where we might be headed.

 As a child going to the schools in the 60s and 70s, I don’t think us students or our parents had anywhere near the safety concerns students and parents now have. Is there any chance that we as a society can ever go back to those days? What would have to change to make schools a safe place as they were in this country for so many decades without having to basically fortify them with so many safety features as we are now doing? What does this say about the direction we are headed as a society?

Dan Reider is a Mechanical Engineer who has designed schools for 40 years in South Carolina.