On Thursday, February 27, Lindenhurst High School announced to its student body that they would be installing push bar alarms on certain exits around the school. This came as a result of the school searching for ways to improve their security system and further protect the faculty and students.

A push bar alarm is an alarm that sounds when the door is opened from the inside. This is in order to prevent unauthorized students from exiting the building. As well as to prevent the door from being opened for outsiders who have not stopped at the security checkpoint.

Such alarms will be installed on every door that leads outside with the exception of the front entrance, rear cafeteria, rear center hallway, gym hallway doors, and the locker rooms. The doors near labs 1 and 6 cannot be used as an exit at all during the day anymore.

However, these alarmed doors will be marked with a warning sticker making it obvious which ones are alarmed and which ones are not. These alarms can not be set off from opening the door from the outside and you are allowed to open the door from the outside at any location during the school day. They can only be disengaged by security, custodians, or administrators who have the key.

For students who have early dismissal, exit is permitted through any doors that do not have an alarm. At normal dismissal time, 2:05, students are permitted to exit through the doors at the front entrance, the rear cafeteria, the rear center hallway, and the gym hallway. As well as this, the lab doors will be disabled for dismissal and all other doors will remain alarmed and are not to be used as an exit.

Effective Monday, March 2nd, the alarms will be activated and in use. This information was released to the faculty through email on Wednesday, February 26th and is my source of information for this article. Such change will be a large adjustment for the students and faculty of Lindenhurst High School, but it is a small price to pay for improving the security of the building.

Over the past few years, there have been multiple occurrences of violence in schools around the country. Such occurrences  have thrust schools into improving their security systems and this change is just one of many steps in doing so.