Other districts require visitors and in some cases, students and staff, to wear identification badges while on school grounds. Nationally, only 1 percent of schools use metal detectors daily, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. In New York State, metal detectors are used in New York City and other large urban centers, but are not commonly found in suburban and rural districts. As a direct result of the Columbine shooting, the Spackenkill school district in Dutchess County limited access to its four schools and added a monitor to determine who enters the high school. In other buildings they installed video surveillance cameras and modified the front offices, adding glass windows to allow employees to watch the front entrance, Superintendent Andrew Manca told On Board .
Awareness is heightened.
The Hyde Park school district, also in Dutchess County, pays monitors to watch over elementary and middle school students during recess and lunch, and four monitors patrol the parking lot and corridors of Franklin D. Roosevelt High School. All they can do is send a child down the hall. The new system will enable calls both ways. Officials in Schenectady County's Duanesburg school district wrestled with the idea of installing video cameras as a way for administration to keep an eye on hallways but tabled the idea when some students expressed concern that their privacy and trust would be violated. In Monroe County, students in the Greece School District were banned from wearing trench coats to school, a move that school administrators said was overwhelmingly supported by parents and students.