Butler seeks to boost high school safety
School officials are considering flipping Butler Senior High School's principals' office area and its library in a bid to improve security at the cost of shrinking the library.
Over the summer, the Butler Area School District completed the second of three phases of secure entrance improvements to the high school building.
The entrance into the cafeteria was replaced with a “secure vestibule” that lets visitors in near the school's library. Visitors go through security, then walk the halls around to the principals' offices, which are combined with guidance offices.
During the board's Monday meeting, IKM Architecture's Matthew Hansen presented a set of drafts for how to solve school administrator's concerns about the current flow of visitors.
This, Superintendent Brian White said, would be the largest of the three security phases. The project could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months and would likely use up $1.3 million set aside for the work in the district's capital projects budget.
The board voted unanimously to move forward with the design and architectural work, with an eye on bidding out the project in the spring. Work likely would begin next summer at the earliest.
Once finished, the school would receive guests through the vestibule and then process them immediately through the front office. Parents and other visitors would stay there for most business and have their children come to them, rather than being given free range to roam the school.
White describes achieving a “closed campus” as a major goal for their security team. Office space reassignments, particularly for guidance staff members, seem to make more sense in the new area, administrators explained.
One con of swapping the facilities is a size hit to the library, but Hansen and White both said the library is larger than it needs to be given how computer-orientated modern high school libraries function. The new space, as Hansen sees it, would rely on checkout carts of laptops, rather than rows of desktops. Most of the books held in such libraries today are fiction, as reference materials often are more efficiently accessed online.
“Libraries need less of a footprint these days,” Hansen said.
Transportation
White said he has been drafting a request for proposals from school bus companies, but wanted input from the board.
One challenge is thwarting most potential options: There's a general shortage of bus drivers in the area, and most of the supplying companies are seeking ways to lessen their contracts, not take on more.
A relatively large district like Butler's can hit roadblocks when seeking a single provider for the whole district.
Butler students are transported by Valley Lines buses.
Flexible instruction days
A self-described bare-minimum application to the state for the district to begin using flexible instruction days was granted state approval, White reported.
The days are comprised of stay-at-home lesson plans students complete on their own time outside of class in the event of a school closure. For the last several years, some test districts throughout the state have used the days as alternatives to typical snow days.
Plans are in motion to hold a test FID in Butler on Nov. 27.
