School steps closer to heightened security

Iola schools are one step closer to a comprehensive security system that will use special card readers, USD 257 board of education members learned Monday night.
The system would keep access doors locked during class and would reopen during passing period. Faculty and staff would be given special cards, called proximity cards, which would allow for access into a school, as well as hall passes, which would allow students to leave class during the locked hours.
If a student is running late, more than five minutes past the tardy bell, he would require a hall pass from the front office to proceed to class, said Brett Linn, technology director.
The school district will also be installing panic buttons at all the schools. The buttons are to be used only in case of an active shooter on school grounds and would send a message across all law enforcement radios, cutting response time down dramatically.
Guest check-ins will be installed in the schools. Upon entering a school guests will be required to visit a kiosk, which will print out a name badge for a guest to wear after recording the guest’s information. Exiting guests will be required to check-out.
The software was seen at the new Chanute Elementary School when the facilities planning committee took a tour of the school.
The new check-in system will cost roughly $1,159 per school, and will be installed into five schools.
Additional features to the check-in system come with a higher price tag. One feature include scanning a guest’s driver’s license, which would tell school officials if the guest is on the national offender’s list.
The district will be taking sealed bids until Feb. 6 for a security system. The prices for proximity cards and the panic buttons have yet to be determined.
Iola Middle School has received and accepted a bid for a new door that will be installed. The new door will require guests to enter through the main office rather than the side entrance with no supervision.
The bid came from Iola Glass and local contractors.
The Bowlus Fine Arts Center will have a buzzer system with a two-way intercom, camera and a proximity card.
Crossroads will have a buzzer, two-way intercom system with a camera.
Given the existing security around the Age-to-Age Preschool, a keypad entry will be installed.

OTHER UPDATES also need to be made to the schools, said Scott Stanley, director of operations.
Buses are required to be shuffled out after 25 years of use. Stanley said about nine buses will be reaching their expiration date in the next couple of years.
Stanley said he looked into contracting buses, but found the savings wasn’t greater than what the district would be losing. Current bus drivers have a very high chance of losing their jobs because the contractor would hire its own employees and the district would be leasing the buses.
The board decided to purchase a new bus and a new van and trade some of their buses.
The total for the purchase will be roughly $101,645.
Each year a plan is presented to the board for summer work for updates and repairs.
Some of the items to take priority in 2013 are entry doors for the high school and McKinley Elementary School, and roof repairs for the middle school gym, middle school upper roof, science building, McKinley and Crossroads, which Stanley says is the worst in the district.
Leveling the floors in the high school will be postponed another year. Stanley said the floors are not presenting an immediate threat but will get progressively worse.
“We are protecting our students from the outside, maybe we should be protecting them from the inside,” board member Buck Quincy said.
The total costs will be in the ballpark of $250,000.
“Sooner or later we are going to have to pay the piper,” board president Tony Leavitt said. “It’s not what I want to hear but it’s reality.”

COUNTY CLERK Sherrie Riebel approached the board to request they change the way members are elected. Riebel suggested board members be elected at large, meaning anyone in the USD 257 school district would be able to run for or vote for a position on the board.
Currently, wards, causing up to 16 different ballots during election year, divide the board seats up.
“I don’t have a problem with going at large, but I would like to hear what the public has to say about it,” Leavitt said.
The decision to go at large will need to be made sometime before 2015.

ROBERT Shaughnessy asked the board for approval of a property tax rebate in order to open a franchise restaurant, Sam and Louie’s.
The restaurant, Shaughnessy said, is like an “Italian Applebee’s.”
The board tabled the request until the next board meeting. 
Shaughnessy’s son, Toby, appeared before Iola city council Monday night for the same request, which was approved.