Baltimore City Public Schools’ plan to revamp thousands of classroom and office doors that only lock from the outside is a sensible security maneuver, experts said. But they noted the district’s latest cost projection — which works out to more than $6,500 per door — appears higher than average.

Announcing the plan at a Tuesday school board meeting, City Schools CEO Sonja Santelises said it would cost nearly $50 million to replace roughly 7,600 doors and door frames to add interior locks, a project she called a “proactive and critical step” as officials grapple with harrowing mass killings at U.S. schools and gun violence in or near institutions in the Baltimore metro region. Many classroom doors in older schools only lock from the outside, as was the standard practice until the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 prompted education officials nationwide to prioritize protection against mass violence.

High-profile shootings over the past two decades have driven the school safety industry to balloon in recent years as education officials seek new measures to prevent violence in U.S. institutions. The effort has pushed the adoption of expensive fortification strategies that critics say are largely driven by the financial interests of security firms. While some experts disagree on whether the mass revamp to locks on school entryways is the best use of limited funds, advocates — including security industry professionals and the Baltimore Teachers Union — say the simple fix would keep students and staff safe by keeping intruders out without the need to lock classroom doors by entering the hallway.

“I can tell you right now for certain, no active shooter has ever breached a locked classroom door,” said James Gammon, CEO of both the Door and Hardware Institute, a trade association that lobbies for door security firms, and the Door Security and Safety Foundation, the industry’s nonprofit advocacy wing. Gammon said that he was “excited” to see Baltimore “investing this much to do it the right way,” as teachers would be putting themselves in danger by going into the hallway to lock their doors during an active shooter situation.

School safety consultant Kenneth Trump, a longtime skepticof the security lobby and many of their products, said it was “very rare to see” school systems, which face limited budgets and financial constraints, planning such a comprehensive replacement of doors for security purposes.

The rash of school shootings making headlines in recent years has prompted the “highest level of ambiguity, uncertainty and anxiety around school safety” Trump has seen after decades, though he noted mass killings were still statistically uncommon. He said that though “there is a relevant point for doors,” there are other security investments that could protect against a broader range of problems in schools.

“There are numerous door hardware companies that are biting at the bit to jump on the idea of using school safety and justify door replacements and upgrades,” said Trump, who is of no relation to President-elect Donald Trump. There are “many other things that need to be invested in” to bolster safety, he said, including support for students’ social, emotional and mental health and other physical security measures like two-way radios and PA Systems to improve communication.

With Baltimore’s “intruder lock project” in its early stages, there haven’t been any contracts or bids laying out what the effort will ultimately cost. Education officials say that the estimate of $50 million stems from the need to replace hardware, doors and frames, as well as labor and material costs. But safety experts and door security advocates were both unsure of how the school reached such a high estimate, which is nearly double what officials had initially expected to pay. .

That price “seems like a lot,” said Gammon, though there could be other factors worked into the price.

The school system had previously projected each door to cost an average of $3,250, with a maximum price of $5,000. The $50 million figure “is an estimate based on the current market pricing we’re obtaining for both labor [and] materials,” city schools spokesperson Sherry Christian said in an email.

Santelises said during Tuesday’s meeting that the process will start with high schools, which have more “security incidents,” and move on to regional clusters “to balance resources and to manage contractor capacity efficiently.” She also noted that in “most cases,” frames would need to be replaced along with the doors.

Gammon said the estimate likely has “a lot packed into the overhead for the general contractor.” Major modifications to wall assemblies could drive the cost up, he said.

Advocates said the school district could also be considering security enhancements like entry ports, sally ports, panic buttons, remote access, cameras or ID scanners to be affixed to certain entryways.

Replacing doors “can be expensive,” costing as much as $1,000 just to change a lock, said Jake Parker, a security industry lobbyist who sits on the board of the Partner Alliance for Safe Schools, or PASS. The school safety nonprofit, formed by security and contracting interest groups, has created a set of guidelines for districts to improve school safety, though critics say the recommendations are mainly designed to boost sales of security products. The guidelines include doors that lock from the inside, as well as higher-level security features like remote and networked electronic locks.

“If they’re investing that much, there’s a good chance that there is some access control and integration that’s going to be applied to this,” Gammon said.

Baltimore education officials have floated the idea of repairing or replacing interior doors and locks as part of a school safety plan adopted after an independent security assessment found “significant” issues at city schools, including physical problems like the ability to lock doors from the inside.

City school officials then piloted door replacements by spending more than $756,000 of Maryland school safety grant money on lockable classroom projects in 16 schools. Interior door replacements across the entire school district have been a part of the system’s long-term security plans, though estimates of the number of doors needing replacements and the cost of doing so, have varied. A 2022 maintenance presentation pegged costs per door at anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000 each, using the average price of $3,250 per door to estimate it would cost around $14.6 million to repair about 4,500 doors at schools not covered by other capital projects.

In June, the school district estimated that door replacements not covered by capital funding programs or limited-time cash infusions would cost $27 million.

It’s not yet clear which funding sources school officials are planning to use for the project. Santelises noted Tuesday that funding would need to be re-prioritized during next year’s budget season “to really be devoted to this particular effort.” She said the “process will involve structured overlapping steps to maintain continuity from phase to phase” because of timeline requirements for procurement, material acquisition and construction.

Trump noted that while physical security is a “piece of the puzzle,” schools should invest wisely in the broader spectrum of safety to prevent more common concerns like aggressive students, fights and bullying.

“The reality is, people will come back and say ‘you can’t put a price on a life and school safety,’ but you also have to use your limited resources based on a comprehensive assessment of your threats, risks, vulnerabilities and needs,” Trump said.

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