The enhancement of security and access control measures in schools across America, primarily at the K-12 level, has been disorganized, decentralized, inefficient and largely an assortment of methods and approaches, ranging from effective to totally ineffective in performance.
The ability of the educational administrative community to secure adequate, objective advice and counsel on security – from how to address the mass shooting crisis to mass notification, to visitor management and beyond – has been compromised by several factors:
- There has been a large duplication of effort, with thousands of school districts across the country acting locally in trying to secure knowledge and expertise in security.
- There is no single certified body of specialized, education sector security professionals in existence that can supply education officials with objective, accurate, unbiased and above all, cost-effective guidance in ameliorating security threats at schools.
- There is no universally accepted process for auditing a school facility for security vulnerabilities, and no quantitative measurement tool to be used to conduct such an audit.
NAPCO Security Technologies and its Alarm Lock, Marks USA & Continental Access divisions have identified the need for a national school security association or body to be created, as well as the unification of the security industry, in creating a comprehensive process and clearing house for expertise to be constructively applied to the school security problem.
While we wait and hope for the establishment of this national school association, NAPCO and its divisions have created SAVI™ – the Security Access-Control Vulnerability Index™ – to help locksmiths, security integrators and even the school administrators themselves, to evaluate and improve their facility’s security and access control.
An educational resource on school security expertise and combating campus vulnerability, the SAVI index brings together input from a variety of general and school security experts from across the country. SAVI is an objective evaluation tool formatted as an easy electronic checklist that can help evaluate and grade a campus’ current security in minutes – and more importantly, to point out specific areas for improvement in an instructional, brand-agnostic, electronic format. It can be used to administer the SAVI Audit process, which measures how well the total group of security systems and structures work together in blocking an intruder’s access to the school.
In presentations nationwide, Napco has met with great interest and thanks from all walks of school security stakeholders – from administrators and faculty, to facility managers and security directors, and from local PTAs to campus safety pros.
The newly redesigned SAVI School website is available at www.savischool.com, as part of the company’s ongoing K-12 and campus security initiative. The revitalized website has a brand new look, easy navigation, and features new products such as NAPCO’s StarLink Fire Cellular/IP Alarm Communicators; advanced intrusion and commercial fire alarms; Alarm Lock’s standalone Trilogy® or Trilogy Networx® access locks; Marks USA LocDown™ cylindrical and mortise locking solutions; and the CA4K® Enterprise Security & Access Management Platform from Continental Access.
Jorge Hevia is Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, NAPCO Security Technologies, Inc.
