The safety of our country’s children when heading off to school each morning is of deep concern to our colleagues at Convergint. Enhancing school security can provide a vital level of protection for students, faculty, and visitors. In that spirit, we have created our STEP Up initiative to help strengthen security in our schools.

Schools can download our school safety checklist, available below. We urge schools and parents to do all they can to assure that their buildings are as secure as possible. Convergint will continue to provide additional resources to conduct a safety audit, to budget for safety enhancements, and to train school personnel.

We launched this program by going out into our local communities and providing 8 underserved schools with interior and exterior security systems installations, security upgrades, and security assessments. We will also continue to work with local schools to provide further assistance and resources for underserved schools in need of them.

As always, we strive to be our customers’ best service provider and to give back to our communities. We plan to carry that mission forward with the STEP Up program.

It’s of critical importance for school administrators to do everything in their power to enhance the effectiveness of the physical systems in and around their facilities. Here are two resources that can assist in this effort. The first is a security audit document from PASS (Partner Alliance for Safer Schools), which lays out a list of standards, developed by a coalition of law enforcement, security professionals, architects, and school administrators, that defines threats common to schools at each educational level. The second is a basic checklist to get you started on some fundamental things you can do to strengthen security and keep your students and staff safer.