School Security of a Different Color

Students and teachers at Ledyard Middle School can breathe a whole lot calmer now that the new security doors have been installed in the school.

Prompted by the Dec. 14, 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Graner and Director of Maintenance Sam Kilpatrick took a close look at each school's security features and found the middle school to be wanting.

The school was constructed in the 1970s, according to Graner and was built as an "open concept" school, which means there are no walls between clusters of four classrooms but only accordion curtains.

Since the school was built teachers and administrators have fashioned makeshift walls with shelves and filing cabinets but not having solid walls was little more than a teaching challenge until the shootings in Newtown.

Kilpatrick and his team have been steadily erecting walls and installing doors during the month of March in order to meet the need for more security (and without interfering with the current sprinkler system) in the school. The new walls and doors are a stop-gap measure installed with the hope that the proposed school renovation project will be approved by voters in May.

The colored doors that lead to clusters will remain open and locked at all time so all a teacher has to do is close the door, which will close off a cluster of four classrooms to an intruder.

Two sets of stronger, magnetic doors were installed leading to the instructional wing of the school were also installed. Those doors will soon be connected to panic hardware and can be closed and locked from the main office.

The doors are color coded for no particular reason: the colors are red, gold, blue, orange, and green so clusters 1 to 5 will probably be referred by their colors periodically.

School board members toured the school Monday and appeared to be very happy with the new doors.