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Parents and teachers warn of strangers on campus as door sensors and cameras fail; board seeks immediate fixes
Summary
Multiple public commenters and staff described repeated unauthorized adult access to school grounds; trustees were told several exterior doors are not reliably locking because sensors trigger false alarms and the district is replacing door sets and changing vendors. Staff said they would secure doors and pursue short‑term patrols while long‑term repairs proceed.
At least two community members and several staff told the board that strangers have been observed on school playgrounds and courts during and after school hours, prompting calls for immediate security fixes.
"An adult male came into the court and was sitting there watching her," a public commenter said during the public‑comment period, urging the board to improve perimeter maintenance and signage and to increase patrols. Teachers and staff described additional near‑misses and said open‑campus design and broken door hardware make the campus easier for the public to access.
District staff told trustees that recurring false alarms from recently installed door sensors forced them to keep certain doors unlocked to avoid repeated county dispatches. The district described a vendor transition: "We halted the contract with APIC and now it is at CAMNET," staff said, and noted that four door sets have been identified for replacement after a fire‑marshal inspection. The superintendent said the sensors were "dumbed down" temporarily because they triggered alarms 7–12 times per day.
Short‑term steps described at the meeting included locking the elementary front door, increasing staff monitoring of entrances, scanning camera coverage for blind spots and requesting increased law‑enforcement patrols. Trustees and public commenters urged the board to make a security plan public before next school year.
Trustees emphasized several immediate mitigations: station a staff member at the front entrance when doors cannot be secured, adjust camera angles to eliminate blind spots and prioritize the door replacements identified by the fire marshal. The superintendent said Verkada and an approved vendor are being contacted for a door‑hardware solution and that CAMNET will provide a door plan; the district is scheduling the physical door replacement as a summer project to avoid interrupting testing.
Provenance: comments and security discussion begin in public comment and staff presentations (topicintro: SEG 2785) and the operational security plan and vendor discussion continued through the building‑security segment (topfinish: SEG 5730).
