Not even slow them down 1 second. All of our elementary schools have large glass windows and large central door openings. Newtown was actually assaulted through a window not a door. It's amazing what an AR-15 does to a window or even a daisy bb gun. Even if you used prison style narrow windows a wirey little kids could get through there with no problem. Plus for every hole you close to get into a school you also close a possible egress point for escaping from an assailant. Plus there are a myiad of ingress points from utility/custodian access points, kitchen staff, loading docks, food delivery,etc. You cannot run a school efficiently in a constant state of lockdown.

I worked at the Pentagon where 26,000 employees entered and exited the building every day - they had real security but that is not feasible for every school in a wealthy district like AISD much less a poorer district.

But let's really be honest your kid has a greater chance of being killed traveling to and from the school than from a killer at the school. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 5,202 teens are injured and 48 are killed in automobile crashes during a typical prom weekend. We as a community face much greater dangers than the random act of an evil person. We need to careful not to dedicate too many resources to false promise of complete security.

DTF, you are trying too hard not to admit that it's a step in the right direction and may in fact help. You cannot say it won't help definitively, just like I cannot definitively say it will. So... given the chance it may just save one little life, I'm all for it.

You can run all the speculative scenarios you want, but did you think of this one? What if because Allen was the only district in the area without locked doors, a madman decided it was an easier target? Now at least we are no easier than our neighbors.

It's all speculation, but I applaud the effort, late or not.

How much would you pay to save a life? You'd have to be a pretty cheap person not to want to have the same or better security for our kids than all other nearby districts.

You act like we are going state of the art. We are barely doing the minimum. This money should have been spent years ago. It's probably paid forby the interest earned off of waiting a decade.

Come on now, there is plenty of waste in the district. Building inadequate schools this year that will be at capacity in two years is a waste of resources, making it necessary to build again. Security is not a waste.

So every door should be held wide open all day. Got it. Nobody should be checked in, got it. Cameras for review if anything happens should be turned off, got it.

Do you leave your home unlocked when you are on vacation with a billboard saying open door at (insert address)?

Locked doors and a buzzer...cheap. Your inability to admit they may help even the slightest, priceless!

• mgrayar Said:

Oh no my friend this is Allen - we do not have locks and buzzers. We have locks, buzzers, video on all doors, intercom systems, RFID locking systems, infrared cameras, night vision, a centralized monitoring system with uplink feeds to AISD HQ and APD. It will be a cornacopia of technology lasers and CO$T$$$$. All defeated every evening at 6:30pm when all the doors are opened so sports teams can use the courts (a good thing by the way). Brought to you in full color brouchures, powerpoint presentations and sales reps. Because remember, "if it even saves one life".

Heck our stadium ws supposed to have state of the art security installed on it with video monitoring and all that is great in security and the night after we hosted playoff games somebody broke into the stadium and threw all the trash onto the field. Which even with all our security, cameras and monitoring was not discovered until a coach looked out onto the field that monday morning and said "What the f-?" A harmless prank perhaps, but the point is security and safety for elementary schools is myth.