A proper understanding of the campus or campuses being secured is critical. Thoughtful, consultative planning here prevents congested checkpoints and accounts for easily overlooked aspects of school security like unmanaged entrances, mid-day arrivals, and staffing optimization. Beyond that, this is the critical phase where administrators and security teams need to identify their key threat items – typically the smallest threat they want to detect. This is also the phase in which the claims of vendors should be thoroughly tested – if they claim to ignore an item you don’t want to find, like laptops, can they do so while still finding your key threat placed next to it? If they claim they can find knives, can they do it consistently and deliver the throughput they promised at first?

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Garrett’s founders came from five generations of Texas school teachers, so education is in our DNA. Poorly trained security staff and supervisors will compromise your throughput, your security, and your student experience. Not only that, but it will breed resentment for the whole project of improving student safety. Garrett provides FREE online training with certificates to all customers because we believe strongly that proper security education should be available to everyone. It’s also free to non-customers – we care about student safety too and don’t want to keep you from benefitting from the lessons we’ve learned in our decades of security experience.

In addition, Garrett offers optional live remote and on-site training for those who want a deeper dive with a manufacturer security expert. Regardless of which option you choose, our goal is for your team to feel ready and to be ready when students first start moving through your new checkpoints.

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No, that’s not a typo. Education isn’t just for supervisors and staff. It’s for all of your community stakeholders – the school board, teachers, parents, and even students. One of the most common failures in launching a school security initiative is a failure to educate these important people about what the new plan is and what will, and won’t, change when the new weapons detection systems are in place.

Educating students and parents on the process ahead of time is key – can they keep their cell phones on them? Do students with metal instruments need to go through a separate line that is ready to accommodate checking their trumpets and tubas? Will there be a clear bag policy or not? Districts can and should make different decisions on these questions based on their unique environments, but properly informing the people who buy the school supplies and the people who will be bringing them through the checkpoint is critical to smooth adoption and rapid improvement. It turns potential roadblocks into cheerleaders.

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