Some families have raised concerns after a parent reportedly had access to the Historic Campus in September, despite their child graduating the year prior.

“Student IDs pretty much get deactivated right after school ends in June. That gets sent over and their IDs are deactivated after graduating,” Jayne VanderVelde, Executive Assistant to the Associate Director of the Schools, said. “With parent IDs, those may be a little more delayed because of the way our student information system works. We

provide who is a parent to our University Department of Safety and Security through a feed and we don’t do that change over until about mid-July.”

The Lab security team maintains all access rights in a database that is read through the card reader found at all school entrances open to the public. Access rights depend on the individual’s business at Lab and what their work entails. Students, staff, parents and administrators have different access to the school. 

Middle and high school students have ID door access to the Historic Campus from 7:15 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday while school is in session. In comparison, parents have ID door access from 7:15 a.m. until 6:00 p.m Monday through Friday while school is in session.

Additionally, some students receive extra privileges to the Historic Campus.“There are some students such as athletes and certain clubs, I believe the newspaper is one of them, that has extended hours,” according to Ms. VanderVelde. “Athletes because they need to be able to get back in the building to get into their lockers after practices and after games. So they have some extended access until six o’clock.” The Athletics Department sends the rosters of sports teams to the Security Team and they add the privileges to those IDs. 

Parents only receive special privileges when they are required to set up for major events such as Connections or Rites of May, according to Carol Rubin, Assistant Director of Schools.

Many students had no active privileges on Sept. 3, the first day of school, because students in 9th and 11th grade were issued new IDs and the security team had to load all of the privileges in bulk, resulting in some errors.

“You have to balance both ‘what do people want?’ and ‘what is secure?’. Some families want things to be very strict, some families want things to be very open and so you are trying to balance all your constituencies and find a middle ground and also keep the school safe,” Ms. Rubin said. “We are always trying to prepare and train ourselves for situations we hope will never happen, but if they happen, we are ready.”