When a K-12 Campus Gets an Access Control Upgrade
- By Jill Renihan
- February 24, 2025
Schools sometimes need guidance to determine where to start with a security system upgrade, given the vast number of solutions available today. Funding can be a complicated piece of the puzzle to work out, so schools want to ensure that they’re making informed decisions about their security investments.
Should they upgrade the access control system, which is one of the most prevalent types of technologies on school campuses? Or should they add or update video cameras, intercoms, communication devices, duress buttons or vape detection—what would work most effectively to enhance their school’s safety and security?
Risk Assessment Is Key to Upgrading Plans
All of those components are vital. However, there is no stock answer. Each school is different and must base its upgrading strategy on the result of a risk assessment. As the saying goes, “If you’ve seen one school, you’ve seen one school. One helpful resource is the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS), which describes a risk assessment as “the first step toward developing a comprehensive security plan and thus a prerequisite for decisions regarding deployment of security solutions.”
Additionally useful, a building assessment is often integral to the risk assessment process. It provides a detailed inventory of existing physical security components, which then helps schools to identify areas needing upgrades. The need for access control upgrades often surfaces in an assessment, because these systems play a major role in school safety, especially for managing so many people — both authorized cardholders as well as visitors — and for locking down a campus in an emergency.
A report from Pew Research Center based on a 2022 study done by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, confirms that nearly all K-12 schools practice restricting entry by controlling access to buildings during school hours. While the study showed that this practice was pervasive across all school types, it lacked details about the level of technology used.
Upgrading access control technology can be a force multiplier in the overall value of a school’s security status. A well-planned system can reduce operational costs manyfold, by automating security functions so they occur instantaneously. It can interoperate with other technologies such as video, intercom and communication to elevate the overall level of security and safety.
How to Approach an Access Control Upgrade
If upgrading from mechanical locks to access controlled doors with electronic locks, one of the first things a school needs to consider is how authorized people will access the doors. Will they be presenting a card, keying in a PIN code, or using their smartphone as a credential? Some high-security areas could even benefit from two-factor authentication, in which both a card/credential and a PIN are required to open the door.
Adding video surveillance to certain doors, such as a main entrance, also may be needed to enhance the access control. If a school wants to read visitors’ IDs before allowing anyone through an exterior door, then they should consider a video intercom station with a good-quality camera and two-way audio.
When determining which doors to upgrade to electronic locks, schools should consider how technology can reduce laborious tasks. Consider the amount of time it takes for one person every day to open doors to allow people to come into the school at a certain time and then go back to lock the doors when that window of time closes. Technology can do that in seconds, with accuracy, through careful programming that stipulates, “These doors should be open at this time, for this amount of time, and they should not be open for the rest of the day.”
Not only can an access control system ensure that that door remains closed and locked, it also can facilitate a response to an unauthorized individual who is detected trying to open that secured door. When integrated with an intercom or network speaker, the system can convey an audio message that says, “This isn’t the door you should be using right now. Visitors must check in at the main office.” An associated video camera lets staff watch the situation on their laptop or smart device.
If the person has ill intent, the technology ensures they have been detected, delayed and responded to. If the person is there unintentionally, then the message gave them the information they need to change course — all in a friendly manner that leverages technology to manage the situation.
Insist on Open Architecture
The key to integrating an access control system with video surveillance, intercoms and network speakers is to buy products that have open architecture. It allows devices from different manufacturers to communicate and act as a unified system. Open architecture not only leads to technology integration, it also helps schools preserve their prior investments and extend their budgets. Products with closed architecture are limited in their ability to work with products from dissimilar manufacturers.
Products in which the architecture is closed also limit a customer’s choices to only what that vendor sells. For example, if the access control manufacturer does not also sell a system that detects vaping — an epidemic in high schools and somewhat observable in lower grades — then the school will have to run vape detection as a separate system without integration to the school’s cameras or locks, or go without vape detection. When systems are complex or disparate they are likely to be used less well and less frequently than if they work together.
Zoning, Audio, Lockdown Features
Upgrading to an access control system that allows the secured doors to be divided into zones can provide many benefits. With many older access control systems, doors are either locked or unlocked in an all-or-nothing state. With zoned doors, a school can address security situations that affect only certain areas either by triggering the corresponding zones or by locking down the entire school and then overriding only the doors in that area.
An essential piece of any security system is the communication system; it works in tandem with access control in many situations to direct not only students and staff, but security personnel and first responders. For critical communication, it is imperative that messages are broadcast clearly. Older PA systems using analog technology typically lack the intelligibility that network audio speakers using SIP protocol can provide.
Zoning applies not only to door locks but to network speakers, as well. Staff can segregate audio messages to people in zoned areas, making communication much more efficient than broadcasting the same message to everyone in every situation unless called for by the situation.
Without an electronic access control system, it is virtually impossible to lock down a school campus instantaneously. With an upgrade to electronic door locks and a programmable system, hallways can be left open during school hours for students, teachers and staff to move from place to place, but all of those doors are available for single-button lockdown.
Establishing an Open, Welcome Feel
Lastly, when upgrading, schools should attempt to balance safety with openness. Students, teachers and staff must be able to feel safe without thinking they are highly scrutinized, or their movements are too restricted. When a student is able to go to the library or see the nurse and come back to class without having to have a door buzzed open for them, it gives a school an open, welcoming feel. However, schools still have to be able to secure those doors instantaneously when necessary.
To help them with their upgrade, schools can download the sixth edition of the PASS School Safety and Security Guidelines — best practices for securing K-12 facilities — and the PASS School Security Checklist free-of-charge. The Guidelines present a layered and tiered approach to school security featuring best practice recommendations that correspond to basic protective elements. This structure allows the best practices to be universal, fitting any district or individual school regardless of its size.