Force Protection--a new frustration

Okay, here's our new school. Beautiful isn't it? 33 million dollars for just the elementary part that we've moved into for this school year. Middle School and High School got their new building two years ago. The workers were still putting the finishing touches on our building the first and second days of school (last week) and the new playground will be finished in October/November. This is not to complain about the school. It's great.....I appreciate the new building....but...



"Force protection" is a word that means a way to protect our citizens in case there's a threat to safety on the base. So, "force protection" dictates that the school can be locked down immediately upon being informed of, or recognizing, a threat.


Every outside door is reinforced steel with no window, always kept locked (except, of course, for the one by the front office)...Okay, no problem. Inside that door is a set of double doors for the first floor and another at the top of the stairs for the second floor. So, if I'm in my room and need to go to the second floor I have to go out through the double doors on the first floor, up the stairs and in the double doors on the second floor. I don't have a problem with that either.....when they are unlocked (which half the time they're not) or propped open (which is against regulations).



The building is a squared-off U shape and to get to the office I can go all the way around the building or across the top of the U-shape through a breezeway. (by the way, I love the breezeway, it opens out to a plaza area that always beckons me to stop awhile) Now, since the breezeway doors are outer doors, it's required they stay locked, too. And, I have to go through those doors not only to get to the office but to the first and second grade classrooms. No problem there, either. I'm all for safety.

But now the frustration:

All rooms stay locked at all times, we teachers are not able to unlock them. So, if you go out of the classroom to use the restroom, pick up a student, go run some copies, you'd better have your key with you. In my position, I go to classrooms constantly picking up students for their time with me and have to knock, have someone in the room open the door and disrupt the whole class. Yuck.

And, the big thing......all the locks are opened with key-cards, like in a hotel, and can only be programmed in Germany. So, when the administration needs staff members to be able to get into the, oh, teacher work room for instance, they have to put in a request to Germany to change the computer program to add that room number then, when they've gotten the okay, to call each teacher into the office to recode her key. What a pain...............right now the key each teacher holds opens the outer doors and his/her room only. All in the name of security.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for the safety of our kids, but key cards programmed in Germany? Isn't that going a bit too far?