Visitors to CCHS will be greeted at driveway security booth

Posted July 11, 2018 at 2:50 pm

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In preparation for the upcoming school year, which is less than a month away, there will be some changes made at Clinton County High School pertaining to how a visitor will enter the property.

In the front entrance, a security post has been built where visitors will be checked in to a certain degree before being allowed to proceed to the parking lot of the school facility.

According to Clinton County High School Principal Stacey Evans, the security post is a safety issue she believes will add another level of security to the facility.

“We’ve had a lot of safety components come up, not just in Kentucky, but all across the United States, and you can’t argue with safety,” Evans said. “This is going to be the first initial component when you come to the school.”

Evans said when parents come in, they will have to stop at the security post first and state their business.

“They will have to say whether they are coming into the main building or into Clear Creek because we have two separate buildings,” Evans said. “We also have students who are leaving or coming all throughout the day. We have kids who are going to the vocational school on buses, but we also have kids who leave on co-op, dual credit classes and also they will leave for internships and things like that. This will be just another check point to make sure the correct students are leaving the property.”

The building will also help with determining whether parents are supposed to be on the property or not according to Evans.

“That way we can monitor who is coming in and sitting in our parking lots,” Evans said. “I think it’s going to be a good things once we get everything going with it,” Evans said. “We are trying to get it established so that it can benefit the students and help with safety.”

As far as who will be working the security post, Evans said there will be several classified positions that will be moved around in order to keep different people working the post throughout the day.

“There will be blocks of time scheduled that way not one person will be sitting out there,” Evans said. “They will be out there throughout the school day. We aren’t going to be checking parents in and out through that particular spot as far as unloading kids because it would cause too much of a traffic jam.”

Parents will continue to drop off students in the same spots they are already accustomed to.

“We are thinking about adjusting parent pick ups to the opposite side of the building where the gate is,” Evans said. “That way they would have access to that parking lot and a gate and they wouldn’t have to intermix with school traffic.”

There have been talks of using Albany Elementary Principal Tim Armstrong’s program utilized at AES for school pickups in the parking lot on the opposite side from the main entrance, but according to Evans that hasn’t been completely worked out yet.

“That might be something we look at in the future,” Evans said. “Right now we just want to separate the loading and unloading of the students and parents and it also should help our traffic as far as leaving and exiting the parking lot. We would like to do something similar to Mr. Armstrong’s as far as the QR codes are concerned with parents and the pick ups. That is something we are looking at in the future.”

Armstrong’s company, SMT Solutions, is a company that developed the QR code scanner that puts students and parents names with a code to make sure the right person is picking each student up.

Evans said the main purpose of the building is to have someone in the post from around 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., but could also have other purposes when sports is concerned.

“This could be a good option if we have multiple sporting events taking place,” Evans said. “This could be the place where we take up admissions. Last year we had district softball and baseball that was going on at the same time. This would just help in that situation.”

Evans said the main purpose of the security post is to add security to the property.

“We are just trying to improve safety for the school and our students and facility because it’s kind of a hot topic. You can never be too cautious or too prepared,” Evans said. “We’ve been doing some safety committee meetings with facility and staff as well as students involved with it. This was one suggestion from that specific committee. We asked Mr. (Tim) Armstrong to come in and kind of do an analysis of the school. It’s kind of been a group effort from individuals. This was one of the first steps to take.”

Evans believes this will take a lot of congestion away during the school days.

“We are hoping this will be finished by the start of the school year, but we have to work with contractors and such in order to get it in and established,” Evans said. “It adds a presence that we are taking safety serious. I think that will set a precedence. I think a lot of the schools around Kentucky, this is something they are starting to implement.”

A construction crew filled the forms with concrete as the base section of a security post booth was beginning to be built on the campus of Clinton County High School. The new post is an attempt to heighten security by offering school officials an additional way to monitor and control incoming and exiting traffic at the school.