Washington County BOE accepts bid for security entry vestibules

JONESBOROUGH, Tenn. (WJHL) – The Washington County Board of Education voted to accept a bid for security upgrades, which include constructing vestibules at the main entrances to Daniel Boone High School and David Crockett High School.

The vestibules will act as holding areas before people can enter the schools. Merit Construction out of Knoxville won the bid to construct these vestibules.

Lewis Group Architects was hired for the designs of these safety upgrades as they’ve worked on vestibules in other schools.

Director of Design Lewis McCall said when people enter the vestibule, they will be greeted by a person before entering the school.

“Of course, obviously there’s cameras sort of as the first line and then they come into a vestibule, but they can’t gain entrance to the rest of the school until somebody lets them in,” McCall said. “So, I think that’s a huge part of it is just having that kind of trap, if you will, where somebody can’t gain access to the school.”

Washington County Schools Superintendent Jerry Boyd said the school district does annual safety assessments, and the board saw the need for improved security at their main entrances. He said the vestibules allow the schools to manage when visitors or anyone else goes in and out of the buildings.

Every school in the Washington County Schools district will be getting vestibules. The new Jonesborough Elementary School was designed with one.

Daniel Boone and David Crockett High Schools were both established in the early 1970s, and Boyd said they looked at the construction of those buildings to see how to upgrade security.

“Certainly things have changed and needs have changed,” Boyd said. “And just the design really pushed us to look at how can we improve the management of entry and those facilities at the two high schools. And that was the same process as we looked at all of our schools that were older and some that were newer than the high schools but still had some age on them and even the newer schools.”

Boyd said there are already security measures in place at all of their schools, but this new upgrade will add more enhancements. He said they’re also in the process of replacing their surveillance systems in every school.

“We have a lot of flexibility to expand and scale those as we grow. We can add cameras, we can add features,” Boyd said.

“We have technology that does a quick background check on visitors to some of the registries and make sure individuals are not wanted or they’re not on some registry where they committed a crime and they shouldn’t be in our buildings.”

$3.5 million is allocated for the security upgrades at all of Washington County’s schools. $1.5 million is allocated for Daniel Boone and David Crockett.

Boyd said he anticipates additional costs.

“Because the prices increase daily, it seems, and then also security enhancements are an ongoing process,” Boyd said. “I mean, there’s always new technology. There’s certainly things that as we do these annual security updates that we may not have picked up on in the past or we receive more information that we might need to evaluate in a different way.”

McCall said Lewis Group is doing its part in keeping kids safe.

“This is a great board that we work with, and I think they’re just trying to keep the kids safe,” McCall said. “And I tell people all the time when we have these conversations about school security, it’s a shame we have to have these conversations that this is necessary, but obviously, you see it all around the country.”

The plan is to get started on the construction this summer and to have the high school vestibules completed by January 2025, before the spring semester.

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