Brainerd High School Updates Security Procedures

Brainerd High School has implemented new security features today at both their north and south campuses.

Starting today, all exterior doors on both the north and south high school campuses will be locked until 7:00 a.m. Six entrances will then be open until they are locked again when classes start at 8:20 a.m. The changes come a week after an incident at the high school where a staff member was attacked in a girls locker room around 6:30 a.m. after a workout.

“We’ve had to recognize that we’re not as secure as we’ve wanted to be in the last several years as far as our doors are concerned. Before our building project is complete in several years, where we’re going to have all of our kids under one roof and we’re going to feel much more safe and secure, we wanted to take steps in the interim to try to sure up our safety and security, said Josh Fordyce, Brainerd High School Dean of Students.

The doors will also open two minutes before and two minutes after each bell rings in between classes to allow students to go back and forth between campuses. All visitors to the high school during the school day will have to ring a buzzer and state their name and purpose in order be let into the buildings.

“The public as they come in, some of our guests as they come in, will just push a button on the outside, a video image comes to an employee on the inside. We greet them. We ask them what we can help them with. They say, “I’m here to see my son or daughter,” “I’m here for an appointment or just to drop something off.” We buzz them in, we direct them where to go inside the building, and they come on in,” Fordyce explained.

The new security procedures at the high school now follow the procedures at other schools in the Brainerd School District.