As Media Specialist Mike Drake walked over to his desk to open the newly installed media center door lock system for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, he reflected on the impact new safety policies had on his job since their implementation at the start of this school year.

“Basically, I can’t do anything,” Drake said. “This morning, I tried to go work on the [shelves] and it was just constant having to get up and come back to the buzzer, get up and come back to the buzzer, so I’m kind of tethered to that. It’s either that or I don’t let anybody into the media center, which is not a good option. It’s going to dominate my day, [especially] at certain times before school, during Power Hour, and after school.”

The new lock system, which was installed the week of Aug. 19, has a camera set up outside the door for Drake to see who rang the doorbell before allowing them into the media center and a speaker for communication with whoever is outside. The system is just one of many changes made in response to recent additions and modifications to district and state policies regarding student safety.

“The law says that we have to have that access controlled or staffed,” School Resource Officer Valerie Butler said. “The media center is usually unlocked throughout the day, so if you think about it like a classroom that wouldn’t really be acceptable according to the law. … We’re just trying to navigate what the law says and interpret that. It’s just not up to us because we have to follow district mandates, even if we interpret it a little differently we still have to implement what the district says we have to do.”

After initial installment, Drake said there were some technological issues that prevented the door from functioning properly. Even now that the door is fully operational, he said students still had trouble adjusting to the system and often did not hear the door unlocking or pull the door open quickly enough within the brief seconds-long window when it unlocks.

“I can’t imagine being Mr. Drake and trying to do all the other things he has to get done,” English teacher Lisa Rehm said. “The library has always been a welcoming place, and I’d like for it to continue to be that way. I have mixed feelings about it and I can understand the need for school security, but at the same time, I don’t know what hurts more and what helps more.”

Butler said that administration is considering using a system that scans students’ ID cards, similarly to the newly-implemented system in the attendance office for late students, as an alternative to the doorbell system to make entry into the media center more automated.

“Mr. Drake has been essentially tethered to that desk,” Butler said. “He has a whole media center he’s responsible for, including all the computers and technology in there, the books, the furniture, straightening things [out] and reorganizing and putting books back on shelves and all these things around the media center [that] he’s constantly having to be pulled away from to man that station. We’re trying to consider freeing up his time and think of [alternatives], because there are some schools over in other counties that students have to use a proxy card to get into classrooms.”

Prior to 2020, the job title of Media Specialist was accompanied by a Media Assistant who would help run school media centers around the county, but it was eventually phased out and is no longer a position in Brevard county schools. As a result, he is the only individual responsible for maintaining the media center.

“I don’t think [the new system] makes the school safer,” Drake said. “I really don’t. I know that’s not a popular opinion amongst the powers that be, and I understand the importance of safety, believe me. There is nothing I would want less than to see anybody here harmed, but I just don’t agree with the ridiculousness of this system. If there isn’t anything broken, don’t fix it, and I don’t think there was anything broken. I don’t see the problem, because you had to already be inside the perimeter of the school campus to get into the media center. Why don’t you have to have a buzzer to get into guidance? Why don’t you have to have a buzzer to get into the gym? Why don’t you have to have a buzzer to get into the cafeteria?”

According to the “Safety and Security Best Practices” section of 2024 Florida statute 1006.07, which went into effect on Aug. 1, state law mandates that all gates and other access points to schools must be “attended or actively staffed” whenever students are on campus.

“There’s been some language changes in laws regarding security that we’ve had to adapt to,” Principal Buster Clark said. “In the last few years, we basically took ‘school hours’ to mean 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and in times outside that window we’d have gates and doors unlocked and only lock everything down when school hours started. Now, it’s whenever students are present, so as students arrive early in the morning and we have campus open, we have to be out there because at that point in time they would be vulnerable.”

Butler said that the new changes in state legislature have been difficult for the school to logistically implement, and that managing gates around the school has been the most challenging aspect of the various changes on campus this year.

“It’s creating a little bit of a manpower issue,” she said. “We’re also having to readjust what we can and can’t have open just because we don’t have enough people to man them, or staff them would be the proper term. … [We] just ask for patience and cooperation from students. Be patient if you come to a gate that is normally open and is closed for some reason, there’s probably a reason for that because we don’t have staffing for it or maybe didn’t get it open in time. I’ve had students already being caught jumping fences, so we just ask that they not do that and just find an alternate route and be patient.”

Amid the increasing focus on school safety, students may have noticed that in every classroom on campus, there has been a new subtle addition decor that serves a different purpose than one might assume at first glance.

“It is a state mandate directly to me from a place called the Office of Safe Schools that every student occupied space should have a clearly yet conspicuously marked ‘hard corner,’” Clark said. “We use the [markers] and put them up there so it’s clear to students, but someone who doesn’t know what the [marker] means doesn’t know what it means. Kind of like our own little inside joke, but it has to be. So, we will get periodically inspected by the Office of Safe Schools for things like secured perimeter, gates and doors being locked, window treatments when available—which are those little felt curtain covering things you see on classroom doors—and now, clearly marked ‘hard corners.’”

The “hard corner” is new legislative terminology that refers to the safest area in a room, which students would go to in an instance of emergency lockdown protocols. For safety purposes, the appearance of the markers cannot be specified, but students have been made aware of how to easily identify them regardless of where they find themselves on campus.

“The biggest reason this went into place is because, think about all the times students may be in a room they’re not familiar with because we moved them for testing or the teacher’s out and rather than have a sub come in, we move you to another teacher’s class,” Clark said. “It’s rare that they would have addressed that when you got in there, … so we went to something universal across the campus. If you’re ever in a space you’re not familiar with, like say you happen to be in the band room and a lockdown goes in, now you know what to do is just to look for that [marker] and now you know where you’re supposed to be to maximize your ability to be safe.”

Butler and Clark explained that determining the location of a room’s hard corner varies depending on where in the school the room is, but that the main determining factors include where the door is located, whether the room is on the first or second floor, how many windows there are and where the windows are located. The most notable standout in terms of this process were the portable classrooms, which Rehm teaches in; due to their exposed location, Butler said that the safest place would not necessarily be limited to one specific corner and would be to get as low to the ground as possible.

“Administration and staff take the greatest care and importance with safety,” Rehm said. “Think about Maslow’s hierarchy, safety is a base need and you really can’t do any of the other fabulous things that you’re doing in school if you’re not feeling safe. Sometimes I have moments where I feel sad because I realize that you all as students have never known what it’s like to be in a school without locked doors, but at the same time too, it allows people to feel like they can be in their best place.”

Beyond the legally mandated, many changes to how the school operates have come as a result of decisions made by the new administration team. Regarding safety, Clark mentioned plans to install tinted film on the windows of portable classrooms to reduce visibility of students inside, as well as changes in the types of emergency drills that will be practiced.

“Some of the recent changes with fire [procedures] are that if you don’t need to evacuate, then don’t evacuate,” Clark said. “So let’s say, hypothetically, we had a fire in one of the chem labs in building 15. Why should the auditorium classrooms evacuate? They’re nowhere near it, [and] it’s not going to get there, so they stay and we do a localized evacuation of building 15, building 4, and the portables. They evacuate because the fire is close. Similarly, if there’s a fire in the kitchen in the cafeteria, why would the portables evacuate? … So we’ll do some [drills] like that to practice these unique scenarios.”

Additionally, a policy change from previous years now allows students to access their phones between class changes. Previously, this was only allowed before school, during Power Hour and after school.

“The discussion is about student time versus teacher time,” Assistant Principal Sarah Perry said. “When you walk out of a classroom and you’re in the hallway, that’s really now the student’s time, so we want students to be able to take care of whatever business they need to within that time frame to then be ready for instruction when they step back into that classroom. The focus is on making sure students are ready to get in that classroom and learn.”

According to Clark, the new cell phone policy helps keep students safely in contact with those in their personal lives, allowing them to check if “it’s Mom asking to pick up their little brother or the boss asking to pick up the shift tonight” without being completely isolated from that communication until Power Hour or the end of the day.  He said the change has been something teachers are largely on board with, with Rehm adding that it has helped reduce the number of students being caught sneaking onto their phones during class.

“Stuff is in place to keep [students] safe, and to keep [teachers] safe as well,” Clark said. “I think at worst, I get reluctant compliance, like ‘all right, I’ll do it because you tell me to.’ Though in most cases, they all [support] whatever the kids need, and whatever makes their experience better is what they’re willing to do.”

More changes are yet to come, including the possible installation of metal detectors at school entrances around February 2025. Despite the complications that have come as a result of so much sudden change, faculty and staff all agreed that student safety is of utmost priority, and gradual adjustments will continue to be made in order to perfect the well-oiled machine that is West Shore while still ensuring compliance with legal requirements.

“I would just ask that students be patient,” Drake said. “We’ll get used to it. Just like everything, we’ll learn to adapt.”

This story was originally published on The Roar on December 2, 2024.