The Lindbergh Board of Education recently voted unanimously to seek bids for locking hardware for all classroom doors at Lindbergh High School and Sperreng Middle School.

The board’s action came less than a month after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults died.

Superintendent Jim Simpson told the Board of Education Executive Director of Planning and Development Karl Guyer “has been putting in all the elbow grease of trying to find every door that needs a new lock for safety and security so we can keep our children safe.”

As proposed, locking hardware will be required for roughly 327 classroom doors at the two schools, according to Guyer.

“… The new hardware being proposed will allow teachers and staff to securely lock these doors from the inside in the event that an armed intruder gains access to the building or for any other reasons that the building requires a lockdown,” Guyer said at the Jan. 8 board meeting.

“The scope of the work is to install locking hardware that is consistent with all of the locking hardware throughout other schools in the district,” he said. “Completion of this work will mean that all Lindbergh classroom doors can be secured.”

Guyer noted the cost of the locking hardware is outside of the facilities operational budget, “yet because of the critical need, the work will be funded from district reserves.”

The estimated cost of the locking hardware is $650 per door for a total expenditure of $212,550, according to Guyer.

“… I am making every effort to get this brought back to you all by the February meeting,” he told the board.

Board Secretary Don Bee said, “… I guess I’m assuming that if this goes through and we pass this and so forth, once we get this back in February, we’re going to be starting this right away, instead of waiting maybe until the summertime …”

Guyer said, “… The answer would be we would start as soon as the hardware would become available … It does take time to obtain hardware. The good news is that this is less complicated than if we were starting with a new building and having to pull together all the various aspects …”

One down side, Guyer said, is the type of locking hardware required has a “unique style” and he could not estimate how long it would take for it to be manufactured.

“… Years ago, there would be a lot of manufacturers’ stock sitting in a warehouse some place that you could draw on,” he said. “That is not as available in the current market … But as soon as we possibly can, we will be proceeding with this work. It will not be delayed until the summer …”

Board President Vic Lenz said, “And this would be hardware that will allow the teacher to lock the door from the inside should there be an intruder in the building?”

Guyer replied the new hardware actually would be “one notch better.”

“It would allow anybody that’s in that building — you may, as a teacher, have a unique key to your door, but if you are in someone else’s room and for some reason something causes you to need to lock it down, you can lock down that door from the inside with that key throughout the building,” he said.

Lenz also said, “… Just for clarification, the only two buildings that need this now are Sperreng and the high school because at one time we did all of the elementary schools, which at that time included Truman (now a middle school), and when we built Concord as an elementary, it received the same. So we’re just needing to do the high school and Sperreng. Is that correct?”

Guyer said, “That’s correct …”