School bonds for security: More Nebraska districts seek to harden building, classroom entrances

The Norris School District is a 270-acre campus about 12 miles south of Lincoln. Tucked in between some agricultural land are the district’s four buildings — an elementary, intermediate, middle and high school — along with a district office housed in the high school.

When visitors walk up to any of the main entrances, they step through a first set of doors and then hit a button to buzz into the second set. An office worker will speak through the intercom to verify who is there and why. Then they meet another set of doors by the central office.

It’s a common design across Nebraska as districts work to make buildings safer and more secure.

Superintendent Derrick Joel said his district has made several technological advancements to help with security, such as new cameras and a system to scan visitor IDs for a quick background check.

“I feel with the technology side of it, we've done a really good job of finding solutions to help make us a safer school, but more efficient,” Joel said. “Now, it's the brick-and-mortar piece of what is that standard in a school office and entryway, and that's what we're missing right now in terms of the safe and secure entrance side of it.”

Norris was one of six school districts that attempted to pass a school bond in May. It was one of four that failed.

The bond would have covered repairs to old systems like the HVAC, replacing the roof, creating more secure entrances, separating traffic for pick-up and drop-off and updating for ADA compliance.

Dozens of Nebraska districts have been using school bonds over the last several years to try and upgrade safety in their buildings in the past few years, including Norris, McCook, Pierce County, Tri County, Millard and Logan View.

Through those bonds, districts sought to create more secure entrances through making one entrance for visitors, upgrading security cameras and connecting school buildings so students don’t need to walk outside to get to their classrooms.

The Nebraska school districts aren’t outliers. Schools across the country are renovating their buildings to harden their security infrastructure. That often means they’re building new entrances, investing in new communication technology and installing more hardened entrances and exit points. A report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2020 found that more than half of the country’s K-12 school districts needed security upgrades. And some schools were delaying improvements to HVAC systems in order to invest more in security.

Joel said a bond would have made it simpler to address multiple concerns at once, like the security needs, HVAC upgrades and a roof replacement.

“It made sense for a bond issue because it's a one-time process,” Joel said. “You budget for the work and then pay it out over a 20-year period, mobilizing once, so you're locked in with your labor, you're locked in with your mechanical.”

Norris’ $34.8 million bond attempt included moving the offices in the elementary, middle and high schools from the center of the building, which allows visitors to walk past several other hallways and classrooms before checking in with the office, to instead create one clear entrance for each school.

“There were going to be windows; (the) office was going to have eyes,” Joel said. “You'd still buzz in, and then there was only one direction to go, and that's into the office to get into that visitor management system.”

That seemed to be the most popular design for schools looking to upgrade security through a bond. The school district in Waverly was also looking to move its offices to the front of the building. Superintendent Cory Worrell said it’s one of the latest upgrades in school security.

“Thirty, forty years ago, design would have been: let's put the office in the middle of the building, and that way everybody has easier access or fair access,” Worrell said. “Well, now the design would be: let's get offices up to the front of the building so that we have better eyes as to who's coming in and out of the building. We can control that access better.”

He said conversations around safety and security have grown over the years, especially with school shootings and other violent incidents. Worrell has been in education for 30 years and announced he will retire after this school year. Addressing safety doesn’t stop at the physical building, Worrell said, but it goes further into training students and staff on what to do in a dangerous situation.

“Unfortunately, safety and security has become a major talking point in schools, not just in Nebraska but across the nation,” Worrell said. “It's something that we have to spend time on, all the time.”

The ‘mouse trap’

Jay Martin, school safety and security director for the Nebraska Department of Education, said his main focus is prevention. He sees anonymous reporting, having a threat-assessment team and cultivating healthy relationships between staff and students as the three main ways schools can prevent violence.

To help schools create physical barriers to enhance their protection, NDE distributed a $10 million grant to Nebraska schools for safety and security infrastructure, and it prioritized the schools that were asking for locked doors.

“Under the Sandy Hook Commission report back in 2015, when they had the Sandy Hook Commission, the only thing that's really been proven to stop a major incident like a school shooting is being behind a locked door,” Martin said.

The Sandy Hook Commission was a 16-member panel of teachers, medical professionals and safety leaders brought together to improve safety in Connecticut schools following a deadly shooting at an elementary school.

The grant money wasn’t always enough to cover the full cost of the project, though. Martin said schools would turn to bonds or other funding mechanisms to get the rest of the money.

“Let's say we awarded them, say $10,000, but their project that they had was $20,000,” Martin said. “They had to make up the $10,000 some other way, so they would get a bond for that to try to compensate, so they could still finish that project, but we were able to help them to some extent.”

NDE is working to apply for another federal safety grant, and Martin said there’s a need for it because schools have already reached out to see if the department was applying for the money.

At Seward Public Schools, Superintendent Josh Fields said educators are always teaching behind locked doors now. One of his district’s next steps, which Homeland Security recommended during two visits to the school, was to move the offices to the front of all the buildings. The district already has that setup in its middle school building.

“We call it the ‘mouse trap,’ where parents can only, or visitors, they have to go through the office and don't have access to any of the building before they do that,” Fields said.

Seward was successful in passing its $25 million school bond in February, which Fields credits to the strong support from a group of parents, grandparents and other community members. In addition to moving the offices, the bond included adding a new science wing that is also a storm shelter, redoing the music space and building spaces specific to career and technical education classes.

“Those are some people that as part of their legacy, along with the school district, of making this happen for the future, for future students, future generations, to be able to have facilities where they can learn at a high level, be able to have opportunities to do lots of different things, whatever career they may choose in the future,” Fields said.

Seward is one of the schools to have a bond pass so far this year. Worrell in Waverly said he believes it’s a challenging time for schools to get a bond approved because people are worried about higher costs with gas, groceries and bills.

“I think the main parts of our bond issue people agreed on — safety, improving course offerings, current technical education, those kinds of things,” Worrell said. “But I think overall, when you look at these economic times, it was a hard thing to get done.”

Without the bond, Worrell said he’s not sure the construction to move the offices will be possible.

“I think every public school in Nebraska right now, if you have any real kind of construction project — it might not be based on safety, could be based on career and technical education — it's a challenge to be able to generate enough revenue to pay for design, construction that makes sense for your school district,” Worrell said. “I don't know in the future if that's going to change a whole lot.”

Worrell said the district will look at other safety improvements like upgrading cameras in the meantime. He mentioned the school also uses walkie-talkies in place of cell phones to communicate with others across the school, making for quicker response times.

Norris’ bond attempt likely failed because the district is still paying off a previous bond, Joel said. He added the district will still be looking to make certain repairs and upgrades.

It will prioritize certain projects first, like the roof, HVAC, parking and ADA accessibility but will look at moving the offices eventually.

“That, I think, was an uphill battle for us,” Joel said. “But again, we were very clear and transparent through the process that whether the bond is successful or not, the work does need to get done.”