SACO (WGME) -- You may take your kids to the bus stop, or you drive them to school yourself. When they get there, you're putting faith and trust into teachers and administrators to keep them safe. It's a bigger responsibility than ever before for schools, since the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut.
“We need to know who's in the building at all times.” said Terry Young, Principal of C.K. Burns Elementary School in Saco.
It's a changing mentality for educators and a constant worry for parents since a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults, at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Young showed us their system, one of the more elaborate ones in Maine. The school added locking doors, a buzzer system, and security cameras about a year and a half ago, well before the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. All the schools in that district, RSU 23, have similar systems. According to district administrators, it costs about $10,000 to install per school. Young says the biggest change was the buzzer system, and it's a trend you can expect to see as more and more schools focus on school security.
“Some of it is building security and what we're doing inside school buildings, but it's what we do to prevent somebody from showing up to one of our schools looking to do somebody harm in the first place," said Maine Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen.
That's what happened in Stockton Springs back in 2008. A man armed with a gun, held a group of fifth graders hostage.
“It's everyone's worst nightmare.” said Linda Bowie, who was the principal at Stockton Springs Elementary when the attack occurred.
No one was hurt physically, but now, almost five years later, Bowie says the students' emotional scars are still healing.
“We've learned from the Stockton incident about the kinds of support that schools need and I hope that would continue should anyone else be as unfortunate as we are to have experienced that," said Bowie.
School leaders all promise tighter security in Maine schools, but any plan will cost money, something that is hard to come by as budget cuts are expected for schools across the state.
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