At Staples, you walk into the lobby and see Principal Dodig greeting students. At other schools you walk through metal detectors and are greeted by a security guard.

During free periods, students go to the caf, grab a hot chocolate, and head to the library. At other schools students report to study hall, under the constant supervision of a teacher.

At Staples, students don’t even have to ask to go to the bathroom; they can just leave. At other schools, walking through the hallways without a pass can result in a detention.

We know we have an open environment and are grateful for the administration’s trust. This is our daily environment. This is what gives us our sense of safety. This is one of the beneficial elements of the often sarcastically-dubbed Westport bubble. Teachers, students, and the administration can coexist in a pleasant atmosphere.

This atmosphere is what makes our community as unique as it is. People enjoy being a part of it. People feel safe.

Sandy Hook made people question that safety. All of the freedoms felt like liabilities.

A year later, and no substantial changes have been made. In a way, it’s a good thing–we resisted the temptation of putting in the metal detectors and hiring the security guards.

But it is a year later. It doesn’t seem right that nothing has changed: on that day, everything changed.

It’s not that we want to go to school in an impenetrable fortress.

First of all, it is highly unlikely that Staples will ever be impenetrable. If someone with a gun wants to get in to Staples, they probably will.

But the goal of a security system isn’t solely to prevent access to the building, but to slow the assailant down once inside the school. To give them less of a window for destruction. To give the police time to respond. To minimize damage, because we’ve all witnessed the catastrophic damage that can be done to families, to a classroom, to a community.

We have hired Kroll Industries to conduct a security audit, the results of which have yet to be seen. That was a $100,000 dollar investment, and we genuinely don’t know the payoff as of yet. We don’t want a fortress; we need to know something’s changed.

Until we hear from Kroll, there are minor precautions we can take that don’t affect the atmosphere that we all value but might give us a greater sense of security.

These things don’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We can put posters on the windows of classrooms, so an intruder wouldn’t be able to see inside. Or at least have them readily available if a lockdown were to happen. We can take 5 minutes to review a lockdown procedure for every classroom that a student might be in, including the library, fieldhouse, and cafeteria and especially free periods. We can keep the doors open but always have them locked, so should the need arise, they can be pulled shut right away. We know no one’s going to leave their friend shivering in the cold coming in from first period free, but think twice about opening the door for someone you don’t recognize.

It doesn’t seem right that nothing has changed.

Right now when we go to school on a daily basis, we feel safe. We want to make sure that if there is ever a crisis that we feel safe then, too. Our ideas aren’t revolutionary, and Kroll Industries will probably do a lot better. But in the meantime, we can start taking smaller steps tomorrow, and people would hardly notice.

And that’s the best part.