FARMINGTON – Most doors to SAD 9 schools – with some exceptions at the high school – are locked, Superintendent Mike Cormier told directors Tuesday.

Main entrances to district schools are kept open, and visitors are asked to stop at the school office and sign in and pick up a visitors’ badge, Cormier said. Staff have been reminded to stop people they see that don’t have a badge or a name tag and students are checking as well.

But some of the high school’s side glass doors are left unlocked to allow students to get to portable classrooms, which are not connected to the main building, he said.

The district is moving to keyless entry for staff members. A code will be embedded into their badges to identify them and to gain admittance to a designated entrance, Cormier said. That system will be able to tell who has entered and at what time.

Security cameras were installed at the schools this summer and are semi-operable right now, he said.

“Every school in the district has a crisis plan,” Cormier said.

The plans have been reviewed by Franklin County Emergency Management Agency Director Tim Hardy and administrators. The next step is to do a walk-through, table-top exercise reviewing different scenarios with the plans.

Also, school administrators have been asked to become certified with the National Incident Management System, Cormier said.

Once a crisis happens and police take over, plans outline who is in charge and give guidelines to what happens next.

Assistant Superintendent Sue Pratt will go to the scene of any crisis and Cormier will deal with the public and handle communications with the media at the superintendent’s office with staff available to assist him.

Security plans are constantly being examined, Cormier said. He has focused much of his time on it this year, which doesn’t leave much time to see how academics and students are doing.

The superintendent also said he started a practice in late September after several shootings at schools around the country of having teachers shut classroom doors and lock them.

He found out that some teachers don’t like to have their doors closed and locked, with some citing fresh air circulation concerns, disruptions and inconvenience of opening doors to students while teaching.

He also noted that some doors cannot be locked. Repairs, including new handles to the doors that could not be locked, have either been completed or are in progress to make sure they lock, he said.

When he taught, Cormier said, he would continue to teach and move over to the door if a student knocked to let them in. He also noted that when the heating system is working correctly, classroom doors should be kept shut.

He realizes that security is an inconvenience at times, he said, but it’s a small price to pay.

“If someone is bent on doing harm, it is going to be very hard to prevent it, but I’d like to limit their choices,” he said.

Every barrier the schools install limits an intruder’s options to gain access, he said.

More security measures are in the works, he said, to keep students and staff safe. He also said that all schools but one have phones in the classrooms with access to outside lines. The phone system in the last school is not completed yet, he said.