Bethel Park High School Cafeteria
Across the nation, schools are balancing the need for open, welcoming environments with the reality of evolving safety threats. While large-scale security upgrades and legislative mandates often make headlines, many proven strategies can be implemented immediately and at modest cost. In 2025, trends in school safety emphasize layered protection—combining site planning, controlled access points, interior zoning, enhanced classroom security, clear communication systems, secure building grounds, and a proactive approach to safety.
WMF consistently integrates these strategies into our school projects. The following items outline our basic approach to designing safety into our school projects.
1. Site Planning for Safety
Effective site planning is a foundational element in creating safe school environments. The arrangement of vehicular and pedestrian circulation patterns plays a critical role in reducing conflicts, managing access, and ensuring student safety before anyone even enters the building. In 2025, best practices emphasize physically separating bus traffic, parent drop-off/pick-up zones, student walking routes, and visitor parking. This reduces the potential for accidents, improves traffic flow, and allows for better monitoring of all access points. In addition, thoughtful site design should minimize and, where possible, avoid direct lines of sight between exterior public areas and interior student spaces. This helps protect student privacy and security while maintaining visibility for supervision where it is needed most.
- Separate bus loading zones from parent drop-off and pick-up areas to reduce congestion and potential accidents.
- Design dedicated pedestrian pathways for students that do not cross vehicular routes whenever possible.
- Locate visitor parking and entry points in a way that funnels guests toward monitored access locations.
- Use landscaping, fencing, and building orientation to block direct lines of sight from public exterior areas into classrooms, cafeterias, and other student spaces.
- Ensure that supervisory staff have clear views of high-traffic exterior areas without compromising student safety.
WMF’s site planning solution for Peters Township high school illustrates a creative solution for independent parking, drop-off, and pick-up areas that separate different vehicular user groups (buses, student, staff, parent, and visitor). This solution also creates safe traffic routes that minimizes conflicts between vehicular and pedestrian circulation.
2. Safer School Grounds
A school’s exterior environment plays a vital role in both security and student well-being. Effective site design reduces vulnerabilities while maintaining an atmosphere that supports learning and wellness.
WMF’s design for Bethel Park High School located the outdoor recreation and cafeteria spill-out space within a protected courtyard, ensuring outdoor areas remained safe, visible to staff, and shielded from public access. Strategic landscaping provided clear monitoring of the site without creating concealment opportunities for unauthorized visitors. Similarly, WMF’s planning experience on higher education campuses has focused on designing open green spaces with intentional visibility—balancing the benefits of natural light and wellness with the realities of modern safety needs. These same strategies translate directly to K-12 environments. Key Strategies for Safer Grounds include:
- Maintain clear surveillance and monitoring of sight by trimming or limiting dense vegetation near building exteriors.
- Provide bollards or other physical barriers at vulnerable entry points to deter vehicular threats.
- Use fencing and access controls to monitor and restrict parking lot and driveway access.
- Use windows to preserve natural light for student wellness but be creative in their placement to avoid direct lines-of-sight into classrooms from unsecure exterior spaces.
- Design evacuation routes and exterior spaces to be visible, predictable, and easily supervised.
Grounds design is more than aesthetics—it is an essential layer of protection that complements building security measures.
3. Building Entrances
A school’s main entrance is its first and most critical line of defense. National safety trends now emphasize “single point of entry” designs that direct all visitors through a secure, monitored access point. In 2025, states are increasingly mandating vestibules, reinforced glass, and electronic access control systems in both new and existing schools. These measures not only deter unauthorized entry but also give staff valuable time to assess and respond to visitors before they reach student areas.
Over the years, WMF has designed variations of secure vestibules tailor fit to the specific needs of the school district. These entry points are often monitored and controlled by administrative staff/offices overlooking the entrance, but more often we have found our clients integrating security staff to oversee the monitoring. No matter the need, WMF has experience in creating layered security checkpoints without compromising a welcoming appearance. A few of the key points to creating a safe and successful entrance are as follows:
- Single, Controlled Entry: Limit access to one main entry point during the school day, converting other doors into emergency-only exits.
- Secure Vestibules: Use a lockable entry vestibule to funnel visitors through administrative oversight before entering student areas.
- Visibility & Surveillance: Position offices near entrances for oversight; if impractical, install cameras and intercom systems.
4. Corridors, Stair Towers, and Common Spaces
Once inside, a school’s circulation spaces can either limit or enable intruder movement. Current best practices focus on zoning interior spaces, enhancing visibility, and reducing concealment opportunities. Affordable camera systems, real-time monitoring capabilities, and strategic layout adjustments are helping schools create safer interiors without extensive reconstruction.
In our renovations for the Corry Area School District, WMF reconfigured corridor access points and added electronic access controls between public and instructional areas. For a Pittsburgh-area charter school, we designed open, well-lit stairwells visible from key staff locations, reducing potential hiding spots.
- Zoned Access: New and renovated facilities should be zoned to limit access between public and student-only areas.
- Video Monitoring: Surveillance in corridors and common spaces is highly effective and affordable.
- Minimize Hiding Spots: Lock all doors from public areas and consider vision-screen alternatives for restroom entrance doors.
In new or fully renovated facilities, circulation areas are zoned to control access. For older facilities, cameras can provide affordable oversight. Public restrooms and similar spaces require designs that balance privacy with security while still permitting oversight. Providing and monitoring locked access into non-public spaces reduces hiding opportunities.
5. Classrooms
Classrooms must serve as safe havens during emergencies. In 2025, safety standards stress reinforced door hardware, quick-locking mechanisms, and clearly marked “safe zones” within rooms.
For the safety of the students and faculty it’s important that all classroom doors should remain secured during occupancy, equipped with reliable hardware that balances safety with accessibility. Automatic closers or spring hinges ensure doors are not left ajar, while vision panels fitted with transparent safety film provide added resistance against forced entry. Within each room, designated “safe zones” should be clearly identified and reinforced through thoughtful layout, giving students and teachers a predictable, protected area during emergencies.
- Locking Mechanisms: Keep classroom doors locked at all times using simple but reliable hardware like deadbolts with interior levers and key access from outside.
- Auto-Closing Doors: Spring hinges or door closers ensure doors aren’t left ajar.
- Vision Panel Security: Reinforce glass with safety film to prevent easy breakage.
- Defined “Safe Zones”: Use flooring markers to indicate areas of the classroom out of sight from door panels, where students can move during lockdowns.
WMF has updated classroom security across multiple districts by retrofitting existing doors with safety latches and vision panel films, providing cost-effective but meaningful upgrades without requiring full door replacements.
6. Communications
Rapid communication can save lives. In 2025, best practice emphasizes integrated, two-way communication systems that enable administrators to instantly alert the entire school and connect directly with first responders. Schools should be equipped with reliable “all-call” capabilities, hands-free two-way intercoms, and systems that automatically notify 911 centers during emergencies. These tools form the backbone of coordinated lockdowns and evacuations, ensuring critical information reaches every classroom and common space without delay.
7. Awareness and Training
Physical improvements are vital, but preparedness is equally important. Communities often believe violence “can’t happen here,” yet awareness and frequent practice reduce risks and improve readiness. Creating a culture of vigilance is among the most effective defenses.
- Conduct routine drills for students and staff.
- Train personnel in situational awareness and response.
- Encourage open communication of concerns from students and staff.
As part of school planning projects, WMF has participated in stakeholder workshops, guiding administrators and teachers in understanding how design intersects with emergency preparedness practices.
State Spotlights
WMF, Inc. works across multiple geographies, from rural communities to urban campuses, and remains committed to monitoring evolving policies and best practices in school safety. This broad perspective allows WMF to apply nationally recognized strategies while tailoring solutions to the unique needs of each region.
Texas: Following the tragic Uvalde school shooting, Texas passed House Bill 3 in 2023 requiring every campus to have an armed security officer and silent panic alert technology. By 2025, districts are also eligible for safety grant funding through the Texas Education Agency for controlled entry points and communication upgrades.
Pennsylvania: The state expanded its School Safety and Security Grant program, enabling districts to implement vestibule security, camera systems, and threat assessment training. Many of these initiatives stemmed from lessons first raised in 2018 hearings.
Ohio: Ohio created the K-12 School Safety Grant Program, with over $100 million allocated for improvements. Funding is directed to secure entries, communication systems, and mental health initiatives. WMF’s regional projects benefit from these resources by aligning design strategies with grant opportunities.
Conclusion
School safety requires a layered approach that integrates site planning, access control, classroom protection, communication, grounds security, and awareness. WMF, Inc.’s work across our geographies demonstrate how thoughtful architectural strategies—many achievable with modest budgets—can significantly improve safety while maintaining environments conducive to learning.
