Threat of Shootings Turns School Security Into a Growth Industry<br />Richard Soloway, the chief executive of Napco Security Technologies, which makes safety software<br />systems, said in an investor call on Feb. 5 that campus safety was a “significant opportunity.”<br />The vast and expanding array of security products can confuse school officials, said Stacie Dinse, the marketing<br />director of Rauland, which has provided communications systems to schools for more than 75 years.<br />But Heather L. Schwartz, who has studied safety technology for the RAND Corporation, said that research into what actually works is “really thin.”<br />“There’s not a lot of evidence to help districts sort through the pile before investing in costly systems,” she said.<br />“Right now, there’s going to be a lot of appropriations dollars being sent to school districts without a lot of oversight,”<br />said Curtis S. Lavarello, executive director of the School Safety Advocacy Council, a training provider.<br />He said, “I’ve seen everything from door locks to apps to analytics to metal detectors, and I haven’t even gone through all of them yet.”<br />Schools were generally considered a safe haven from the outside world until 1999, when two<br />students at Columbine High School in Colorado massacred a dozen students and a teacher.<br />“Twenty years ago, school safety and security needs revolved around student fights, vandalism, weather-related emergencies<br />and health-related emergencies such as a student asthma attack,” she said.
