The leading security system in our school for guests and visitors is referred to as the Raptor system. Don’t be alarmed; creatures from the Cretaceous Period have not been risen from extinction to protect our school.
The small, rectangular scanner sits near the window and speaker connecting to the main entranceway when you first walk into the building, and is hooked up to a computer at the main entrance in the office. This safety check system is much more efficient than the ones the school had before, for it is quicker and more thorough.
The Raptor system works by scanning the driver’s license of the guest trying to check into the school. The Raptor scans the license and does a check with the name and license number, and it uploads the portrait on the ID badge.
If the name has an offense tied to it, the message alerts the secretaries, and they are not permitted to enter the building. If the person has no record, Secretary Mrs. Linda Keener types the location of the building this person is headed to into the ID that has come up on the screen and then prints out the pass for guests to wear.
The IDs are passed through the window by the speaker and into the main office to the secretaries, who then will scan it, before the guests enter the building. While it is a much safer system, there are some flaws that occur.
If the visitor who is getting their ID scanned shares the same name as a person who is a child predator, the alert will pop up, even if they have no criminal record.
In situations like this, Principal Timothy Dadich and Vice Principal Frank Hernandez are notified and brought in to meet this person, and a security officer is established to escort the visitor.
Currently, the system only notifies the secretaries about child offenders. “Someone could go rob a bank and [their name] wouldn’t come up,” Keener said.
Another problem arises when the internet is down because the system is unable to scan the ID of the visitor. In that situation, the guest comes into the office and manually fills out a visitor’s pass, and he or she is escorted by security through the school.
Ideally, no one is let into the school until the security check is passed unless the Internet is down. However, there is also an issue of students letting others into the building.
A major flaw in the current system is when students let someone who is at the door into the school without getting a proper security check first.
To prevent this, a renovation plan has been proposed, making it so the school entrance opens into the main office, requiring all visitors to enter through the office and not directly into the school.
Keener likes this idea a lot better than the entrance way that we have now and said that the parent reaction to the system was mostly widespread positivity. “Most [parents] really like it,” Keener stated, ‘it’ being a reassuring security system, especially for the darker times we live in now.
The Raptor system is much better security than we have had in previous years, and one does not need to be a certified paleontologist to use it. Though there are still some flaws to iron out, the security in the school is expected to improve over the next few years.