One Northwoods school district is upping its security efforts.
The state Department of Public Instruction this week sent out a report saying they wanted to, among other tasks, increase safety at schools by increasing help for students with mental illness issues.
While school administrators were sifting through the recommendations, Northland Pines District Administrator Mike Ritchie says they have already upped security at their schools. He says they still do the standard drills, but have added others..
"....we've got a Code Blue, a code Black for medical emergencies to an intruder in the building. So we have our kids practicing those different types of scenerios which is really unfortunate, but we feel we have to do that...."
Ritchie says this last year they spent $215,000 to upgrade security. He says the high school was adequately prepared, but they did upgrades on the other four buildings entrances that requires visitors to go through the office.
But they are also adding on a new practice district-wide called the RAPTOR system...
"....if a visitor comes in, they must scan their driver's license into our computer program and that goes right to the sexual predator database. It will print out an ID badge with a person's picture on it...."
If there are no problems reported in the database, you can use that ID to reenter the school in the future. If there is a problem, the database will not allow entry and the matter could be referred to law enforcement.
