Brick Schools Holding Info Session On $12M Security Referendum

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township School District will beholding a "referendum fair" to provide more information to parents and residents on the district's upcoming $12 million security referendum.

The referendum is set to be on the general election ballot on Nov. 6.

The referendum fair is set for 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 29 at Brick Township High School.

The fair is an information session that will include the principals of each of the district's schools, with stations set up so parents and guardians can ask questions about the specific projects at their children's schools. In addition, vendors of the systems that the district is hoping to install as part of the security upgrades will be present as well.

The school board held a public hearing detailing the proposals that are included in the referendum on Aug. 9 and a copy of the presentation is posted on the school board's website.

The $12,580,000 referendum includes the following:

• The construction of contained entrance vestibule and main office renovations that create contained entryways in all of the district's schools that lack them. The goal is to prevent people from having immediate access to the entire school from the building's main entrance.
• A visitor management system called Hall Pass that reads a driver's license and can flag people who should not have access, whether it's a child custody issue or something else.
• Updated and expanded video surveillance coverage.
• A situational awareness system called CLASS that, among other features, allows all classroom doors to be locked with the press of a button the in main office in the event of an active shooter or similar threat in the building.

The vestibule construction is the most costly part of the referendum, totaling more than $8.2 million. In some buildings, the main office has to be relocated to the front of the building. Brick Township High School, which is marking its 60th anniversary this year, has two entrances with main offices. That is because the current building once was two separate ones: the west end of the building was the high school and the east end of the building was a middle school until Lake Riviera was opened in the 1970s.

The CLASS system — Crisis Lockdown Alert Status System — is estimated at $2.3 million and includes the ability to alert police immediately while also alerting the staff and students in a building to an issue and can be customized to the school district's needs.

The Hall Pass visitor management system scans government-issued identification that checks the person's name against national registry lists, keeps track of who has visited the school and when, and can be programmed to identify teachers, staff, substitutes, contractors and so on.

The full presentation from the Aug. 9 school board meeting is below. It begins 53 minutes into the video and starts with a presentation by Dennis Filippone, the district's director of planning, research & evaluation on the entire safety and security evaluation in the wake of the shootings in Parkland, Florida, last February.

The referendum is included on the Nov. 6 general election ballot because a special election would have cost the district $50,000, funds that Board President Stephanie Wohlrab said the district could not afford to spend.

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Inside the entryway at Brick Township High School, photo via Brick Township School District