The Palo Alto Unified School District and Palo Alto High School administrators are in the stages of considering implementing new security procedures at Paly, including adding security cameras, slide keys and a roving patrol of the campus.

Paly principal Scott Laurence has been working on acquiring these additions since September of 2005 because of the increasing amount of bike and locker thefts. There have been 114 reported thefts this year, mostly occuring in the P.E. locker rooms.

“Having security cameras in a few select places on campus would help us [the administration] catch the perpetrators and hopefully cut down on the amount of stolen property on our campus,” Laurence said.

As the process moves forward, the school will have a security company come and assist the administration with camera placement, according to Laurence.

“In deciding on the locations of the security cameras, we want to put them in places where the rate of thefts is highest, but we still have to follow privacy standards,” Laurence said.

Although there would be numerous issues with obtaining security cameras for the school, Laurence feels that they are quite necessary.

“The inability to monitor thefts is one thing that as a principal you have a bad feeling about because you can’t catch them,” Laurence said. “With the cameras we will be able to do a lot more.”

Other than the 114 thefts around campus there have also been 22 reported bike thefts.

“One of the things that I would like to see happen is have a fence built around the bike cages near the boys’ gym,” Laurence said.

Slide keys are also on the top of this list of possible changes. Laurence believes that if the school would be able to get slide keys, it would eliminate the problem of keys “flowing around campus.”

“Since these keys are very costly, we would prioritize on deciding where to put them, starting in places where they are needed most and as funding increases we would implement them further in the school,” Laurence said.

Another security measure that Laurence is working on is changing the locks on most of the Paly classroom doors. The locks are on the outside of doors as of now, but Laurence is trying to change it so the locks would be on the inside instead. This would be beneficial if a lockdown were to occur on campus.

“If we have an armed man on campus, teachers should not have to go outside their classrooms to lock the doors, these locks are a basic security measure,” Laurence said.

According to Laurence and PAUSD associate superintendent Marilyn Cook, none of the proposed security measures were prompted by the gun incident that occurred on March 2.

Although administrators have been working on getting these changes on campus for about seven months, there is still a long way to go, but, according to Laurence, they are progressing steadily.

“District officials are now going through the process of figuring out costs for these possible changes,” Laurence said.

Finding out how to fund these additions would be the next step in the process. While it will probably be expensive, Laurence believes that these changes should be at the top of the funding list.

“Everything is a choice,” said Laurence. “I believe that security on a high school campus is crucial because if the students don’t feel safe, it ruins the learning environment.”