The Putnam County School Board will install security film at Park View Elementary and Cookeville High School.
Security film is an adhesive that is placed on glass to make it more resistant to breaking. Putnam County Schools Deputy Director Tim Martin said a new state law requires new school buildings to have security film. Martin said the school system is going back and installing film at all of the schools.
“If you saw on there, it’s very expensive,” Martin said. “It costs $10,000 – $15,000 per building, and so we are just trying to use our security grant money to do as many of those as we can each year until we get them all done.”
Martin said the film will be installed at each school entrance to the two schools. Martin said the security film will make it harder for intruders to enter the schools.
“One of the things that happened at the Covenant School here in Tennessee was that bullets were fired through the front entrance door, and the glass shattered out, and the person walked through that shattered glass to get inside the building,” Martin said. “And this security film will keep that, hopefully, from happening. It will give time. You know, it’s not bulletproof, so it’s not gonna keep somebody out forever, but it would give time that our SROs and our police officers could respond if something like that happened again.”
Martin said he expects the security film to be installed next week, weather permitting. Martin said the security film is another step in ensuring student safety.
“We’ve done some fencing projects in previous years,” Martin said. “Putting fences around playgrounds and things like that. Making sure our gates are operational and those types of things. We look a lot at our doors and our door latches and things like that. We also used some of that grant money for security cameras and things. There’s almost always more needs than there is money.”
Martin said the entire cost of the film was paid by the security grant. Martin said he hopes to install security film at one more school this year.