Soon, visitors to both high schools in the Battle Ground Public Schools district will need to use a video-telecom and walk through the main office before reaching students in classes.
The school district made security upgrades at the high schools after constituents listed it among their top concerns. Visitors at the primary and middle schools are already buzzed into the main office.
Prairie High School will not need any infrastructure improvements to be made first before the video-telecom device is added. Battle Ground High School, on the other hand, will need a few thousand dollars worth of infrastructure projects to get the job done, said Kevin Jolma, executive director of facilities and operations for Battle Ground Public Schools district.
“Battle Ground High School is a little different. We’ve got infrastructure work we need to do there because there’s two sets of double doors in the rotunda and everybody goes through there,” Jolma said. “There is no exterior door or isolated door for the [main] office like there is here in all of our other schools. So Battle Ground, we need to create a new foyer on the sidewalk, covering the entryway for visitors during the school hours.”
Battle Ground’s improvements will not be ready before this upcoming school year starts. At Prairie High School, at the beginning of the school year, the front entrance doors will not be open all day. In the morning, the three double doors at the entrance will be set to a timer to unlock before the students arrive. When school starts, the doors will lock, and visitors will use the video-intercom system to speak with someone in the office and then they will be permitted entry.
“It’s to get visitors to go through the office and not just randomly walk through some doors and be inside of our schools,” Jolma said.
For students, the doors will be unlocked for all passing periods. The main doors are on a changeable schedule for regular days, late start Wednesdays, late start due to weather and early release.
Battle Ground High School’s improvements will not be completed by school’s start because the previous administration could not agree on how best to design the new infrastructure for the main office entry. Jolma hopes the new principal and other administrators will be able to “hammer out those details on the design.”
He added that he anticipates the security upgrade project for the Tigers’ campus will most likely be completed next summer.
