Pennsylvania High School Adds Secure Vestibule with Bullet-Resistant Glass

Pennsylvania High School Adds Secure Vestibule with Bullet-Resistant Glass

After a visitor enters through the front door, they step into the vestibule, which contains a security camera and a staff member seated in a small enclosure behind bullet-resistant glass.

  • By Jessica Davis
  • January 23, 2019

In an effort to protect students’ safety, Bradford Area High School now has a secure vestibule entrance on its campus. The vestibule is located inside the building’s front door and has bullet-resistant glass, Principal David Ray told the Bradford Era.

After a visitor enters through the front door, they step into the vestibule, which contains a security camera and a staff member seated in a small enclosure behind bullet-resistant glass. Three staff members from the administrative offices monitor the vestibule in shifts.

Visitors must then identify themselves before they’re admitted through the vestibule door into an area with more locked doors that lead into the main building. They are required to wear the visitor badge provided at the entrance.

According to Ray, students enter the campus in the morning through a single entrance, with supervision from a school resource officer.

“During the school day everybody comes in and out of the main entrance,” Ray said. “They’ve been doing that for over a year now.”

Ray said that on average, 100 or more people enter and exit the front entrance of the school per day. This number is included in the estimated 1,000 people who move throughout the building every day, including 670 students and 80 staff members.

“We have a lot of agency people [who come through] and a large number of students who go to classes at [the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford] or go out for co-op work experiences” or doctor appointments, he said. “It’s a very busy entrance and we also have parents who drop stuff off.”

The school entrances are still locked during after-school activities and sporting events, but coaches and other staff members have keys, Ray said.

“If we have, for example, a basketball game, we open the gym entrance, but the rest of the school is gated off and not open to the public,” he said. “If we have something in the auditorium, that entrance [to the school] is gated, so you can enter the auditorium, but you can’t enter the rest of the building.”

There are also security cameras located by all outside doors and throughout the building.

About the Author

Jessica Davis is the Associate Content Editor for 1105 Media.

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