School Security in Tobago: What to Have in Place Before the September Term

Five decisions every school should settle in August, written out so you can work through them with your board or your principal, whether or not you ever speak to us.

Term starts in a few weeks. For most schools in Tobago the timetable is drafted, the staffing is close to settled, and the building is being cleaned. Security is usually the last thing agreed and the first thing anybody notices.

That order is worth reversing, and August is the only month in the year when you comfortably can. What follows is not a sales document. It is the set of decisions a school has to make before the first morning, written out so you can work through it with your board, your principal or your facilities officer, whether or not you ever speak to us.

The four weeks you actually have

A security arrangement is not a person standing at a gate. It is a set of agreements about who does what, at which hours, and who is called when something changes. Those agreements take time to write and a little time to practise. A school that starts in August has a plan in September. A school that starts in September has a scramble, usually in front of parents.

There are five decisions. None of them is complicated. All of them are much harder to make in week one of term than they are now.

One. Who controls the gate, and during which hours

The gate is the whole arrangement in miniature. Decide who opens it, who closes it, and what happens in between, and most of the rest follows.

Be specific about hours rather than about presence. A gate covered from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon is a different service, and a different cost, from one covered until the last after-school activity finishes. Evening use by community groups, weekend sport and holiday programmes each need their own answer, because each brings people onto the compound who are not on anybody’s list.

The practical test: if the gate has to be opened fifteen times in a morning for deliveries and late arrivals, is it being managed, or is it simply being left open? A managed gate is opened, used and closed. An unmanaged one is propped, and a propped gate is the same as no gate at all.

Two. How a visitor or contractor gets in, and how you know they left

Every school has a visitor book. Fewer have a visitor procedure, and the difference matters on the one day something goes wrong.

Settle four things now: what a visitor is asked for at the gate, where they wait, who escorts them, and how their departure is recorded. The last one is the one most often missed. A book that records arrivals and not departures cannot tell you, at two in the afternoon, who is still on your compound.

Contractors need their own line in that procedure. Painters, technicians and delivery drivers arrive irregularly, often in vehicles, sometimes without notice, and they are on site for hours rather than minutes. Agree in August whether contractor work happens during teaching hours at all, and if it does, who is accountable for where those people are.

Three. Drop-off and collection

This is where a school is at its most exposed, twice a day, in public, for about twenty minutes each time. It is also the part parents judge you on.

The questions are ordinary ones. Where do vehicles stop, and does that create a queue on a public road? Do children cross traffic to reach a gate? Who is authorised to collect a child, how is that recorded, and what is the procedure when somebody who is not on the list arrives and is entirely sincere about it? What happens when a parent is late and a child is waiting?

The answer to that last one should be written down and known by the person on the gate, because it will be needed in the first week of term. It will also be needed by whoever covers that post when the usual officer is absent, which is the case for the arrangement to be written rather than understood.

Four. Who is responsible when the day is interrupted

Tobago schools lose days to weather, to utility failures and occasionally to incidents nearby. The security question in each case is the same: who decides, who is called, and in what order.

Write a short list. Who has authority to hold children on site rather than release them. Who contacts parents, and by what means when the network is congested. Who checks the compound once everyone has gone. Who holds keys, and who holds the second set. Where the list itself is kept, given that it is no use on a phone with a flat battery.

August is also the sensible month to ask whether your provider can cover the hours after a closure, when a building is empty at an unusual time and everyone who would normally notice is at home dealing with their own.

Five. What to ask a provider before you sign

If you are appointing or renewing, these five questions separate a serious answer from a confident one. Ask for the process, not the promise.

Training. What is the standard, who set it, and how often is it refreshed? “Our officers are trained” is not an answer to any of those three.

Deployment. How is an officer matched to a school post? A hotel lobby, a school gate and a cash route are not interchangeable assignments, and an officer who is excellent at one may be wrong for another.

Supervision. Who supervises this post, how often are they physically here, and does the visit happen when it is expected or when it is not?

Response. In the first five minutes of an incident, who is called, who arrives, and how far away are they? On an island this is not a detail. It is the whole question.

Comparable experience. Not “we work with schools”, but a Tobago institution of your size, and somebody there you can telephone.

Two things worth checking on any provider

First, regulatory standing. A security company operating lawfully in Trinidad and Tobago is approved by the Ministry of National Security, as a Protective Service Agency. Ask to see it. It takes a moment and it is the floor, not the ceiling.

Second, precepted officers. A precepted officer has been granted powers of arrest, which requires vetting and training beyond the ordinary standard. Not every school post needs one. It is worth knowing whether your provider can supply them at all, because it tells you something about the organisation behind the person at your gate.

Where to start this week

Walk your own site, at the time of day it is busiest, with whoever will be responsible in September. Take the five decisions above and write an answer to each one. Most schools find that three of the five are already settled in practice and have simply never been written down, and that the other two are the ones that caused last year’s problems.

If it would help to have someone walk it with you, that is what a security assessment is. We look at access points, hours, movement and the actual risk to your site, and we put it in writing: what you need, and equally what you do not. Plenty of schools use that document to brief their own board, or to compare providers properly. You are under no obligation to appoint us at the end of it.

Dominion Security Services has protected Tobago institutions since 2003. Most of our work is renewal rather than new business, which is the measure we pay attention to.

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Request a free security assessment

We will visit your site, look at the premises and advise honestly on the cover it needs, with no obligation. Prefer to talk? Call (868) 639-7649 or WhatsApp 868 264 9099.

Related: Who we protect: schools · Security officers · Precepted officers