Ohio Childhood Safety Act, would mandate new standards for things like door materials, hinges, alarmed locks, and air-tight seals to prevent smoke fires from spreading.
The Columbus Dispatch
Ohio is about to debate a new way to improve security at public schools: Change the doors.
Taking a page from hospital code requirements, state Sen. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, plans to introduce legislation Thursday that would mandate new standards for all interior and exterior doors in the state’s 3,300 school buildings.
“The best way to defeat an attack and protect our children in the classroom is to make sure the attacker never gets inside the building in the first place,” Rulli said.
Ohio Childhood Safety Act
His bill, which is named the Ohio Childhood Safety Act, would mandate new standards for things like door materials, hinges, alarmed locks, and air-tight seals to prevent smoke fires from spreading. It would also require Ohio’s fire marshals to regularly inspect these buildings and write up those not in compliance.
“In the hospitals, if a battery is not changed on an alarmed door and that inspector comes in, you get written up,” Rulli said. “I want schools to get on a routine where they are inspected by the fire marshals. I want this to become second nature.”
And he’d like to eventually add a requirement that all glass on exterior doors be bulletproof, especially after the recent school shooter in Nashville entered the Covenant School by shooting through two sets of glass doors.
“I would love to do bulletproof glass on all points of entry,” Rulli said. “But that’s going to be a cost that I worry schools won’t be able to obtain.”
Rulli’s proposed bill doesn’t come with an appropriation, meaning it will be up to local districts to cover the costs of replacing their non-compliant doors.
Districts would have one year to assess all of their buildings, and then another year to get into compliance, Rulli said.
“We are willing to work with them,” Rulli said. “We’re going to give you extensions, and those extensions might have to push to five years. But at the end of that, you are always going to be in compliance.”
