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Billerica, Lowell schools add new visitor screening

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This article originally appeared on lowellsun.com and was written by Rick Sobey. To view the original article, click here.


BILLERICA, MA – Last year, visiting Billerica Memorial High School was a piece of cake.

You buzzed in at the front door, signed in and received a visitor pass for your destination. Guests weren’t screened, so anyone could walk the hallways.

Now this school year, Billerica Public Schools is stepping up security in all of its buildings; all visitors will be instantly screened against the registered sex-offender databases in all 50 states.

“This is a new security measure to help protect students and staff here in our schools,” Superintendent Tim Piwowar said at Vining Elementary School last week.

“We’re happy to do what we can to ensure the safety of our students and staff, and this is a great step in that direction,” he added.

Lowell schools also began using the Raptor Visitor Management System in all school buildings and district offices.

Security measures like this have been implemented in numerous schools in the last decade, in the wake of notable tragic incidents in schools across the country. This Raptor system, for example, has already been utilized in some area school districts.

With this new technology in Billerica and Lowell, visitors will now be asked to present identification, which will pass through a scanner; in a few seconds, the Raptor system will check the visitor’s name, date of birth and photo for comparison with a national database of registered sex offenders, as well as locally established alerts.

There will be an alert if the visitor’s name appears on the database.

Once entry is approved, Raptor will issue a badge that identifies the visitor, the date, and the purpose of his/her visit.

“The safety of our students is our highest priority and the Raptor visitor management system provides a consistent way to monitoring visitors who may present a potential danger to our students,” Lowell Assistant Superintendent Jeannine Durkin wrote on the district’s website.

“Your patience is appreciated while we do all that we can to make our buildings welcoming for our community, while maintaining a safe and secure environment for our students,” she added in the letter.

In Billerica, the Raptor system was piloted at Kennedy Elementary School last year, and has now been implemented in all nine buildings.

Last week, Piwowar sent out a message to parents and guardians about the system. Response has been overwhelmingly positive, he said.

“The only negative response was why we didn’t have a system like this sooner,” Piwowar said.

“Part of keeping students and faculty safe is knowing who is in our building at all times, and the Raptor system will allow us to do that,” he added.

A visitor’s badge will not be necessary for those who drop off an item in the office or pick up paperwork. If a person doesn’t have identification, he/she can still be given access to the building, but will be escorted by a school staff member.

Additional visitor data from the driver’s license is not gathered. Also, Raptor is not connected to any other system, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles.

More than 16,000 schools across the country use Raptor. It has alerted officials to more than 50,000 sex offenders trying to enter schools, as well as issued more than 200,000 custody alerts.