Why We Walked More Than a Dozen Schools and Found the Same 3 Vulnerabilities
After two years of SHIELD walkthroughs across Catholic and private schools in New England, the same three gaps show up almost every time. Here they are and what to do about them.
Ocean State Protection Group
Security Consulting Practice
We have walked through more than a dozen schools across Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, and northern Connecticut - Catholic K-8s, Catholic 9-12s, independent private schools, and a couple of public charter campuses. Every walkthrough is two active-duty officers spending 90 minutes minimum on-site.
What we expected to find: a long, varied list of issues unique to each campus. What we actually found: the same three core gaps, almost every time. If you only fix these three, you have done more than 80 percent of the schools we have visited.
Vulnerability #1: The propped side door
Every school has a side or back entrance that is supposed to remain locked from the outside. Every school we have walked also has a wear pattern, a bent magnet, or a literal chock that proves that door spends meaningful time propped open during the school day.
Why it happens: staff bring in supplies through that door in the morning. Maintenance wedges it open during deliveries. PE teachers prop it for outdoor activities. Each individual case has a reasonable explanation. Cumulatively, the door is open more than the leadership thinks.
From the field
At one parish K-8 we walked last fall, the kindergarten side door had a flat-edged wood wedge tucked into a planter five feet away from the threshold. Paint had worn off the doorframe at exactly the wedge height. The principal was certain that door was always closed during arrival hours. The wedge had been there long enough that the metal frame showed permanent scarring. The maintenance lead, when we asked, said it was 'how we get the breakfast supplies in.' Both were telling the truth from their position. Neither knew the other side of the story.
Why it matters: an attacker who studies a campus for even one week will see this. The mantrap and visitor management at the front entrance become irrelevant if there is an unsupervised side door routinely held open during the same hours.
Fix: install electromagnetic hold-opens that release on the lockdown signal. Add a low-cost alert chime that beeps if the door is held open for more than 30 seconds. Train staff that propping a door is a documented incident, not a courtesy. Cost ranges vary by hardware - get quotes from a local commercial door vendor for your specific setup.
Vulnerability #2: Camera coverage that does not see what matters
Every school we have walked has cameras. Most of them are pointed at parking lots, hallways, and main entrances. Almost none of them have meaningful coverage of the approaches to the building - the path between the parking lot and the side door, the area where students wait at dismissal, the line of sight an attacker would walk to reach a target.
The pattern: cameras get installed in waves, usually after an incident or at the urging of an insurance carrier. Each wave covers what was missed last time. No one ever does a comprehensive sightline analysis to find the actual coverage gaps.
We sketch a coverage map during every SHIELD walkthrough. The most common discovery: a meaningful percentage of the perimeter approach has no camera within sight, including some of the highest-risk approach paths.
From the field
At a 9-12 we visited last winter, the school had spent meaningful capital on a 32-camera system in the past three years. We mapped the actual coverage during the walkthrough. Three of the highest-risk approach paths - the narrow service drive behind the gym, the wooded edge between the lot and the playground, and the staff-only path between the rectory and the side entrance - had zero usable coverage. The cameras were pointed at the things they had been told to watch, not the things an outsider would actually use.
Fix: do a sightline audit, not a camera count. The right number of cameras depends on your perimeter geometry. We have rarely walked a campus where the answer was 'add 15 cameras.' Usually it is 'reposition four and add two or three at specific gaps.' Get quotes from a vendor that does the geometry, not just the install.
Want a sightline map of your own campus?
Both founders walk every initial assessment. We sketch the actual camera coverage map during the walkthrough and show you where your gaps are - before any vendor pitches you a 32-camera system.
Book Free WalkthroughVulnerability #3: The lockdown drill that is not actually a lockdown drill
Schools that drill regularly are dramatically better prepared than schools that do not. But when we observe drills (or recreate them in tabletop exercises), the failure pattern is consistent: drills test the announcement system and the classroom door procedure, but they do not test the decision tree for the staff who are not in classrooms.
Where are the cafeteria staff supposed to go? The maintenance crew? The visitors in the lobby? The PE teachers who are outdoors? The bus driver who just pulled up?
Every school we have walked could answer for the classrooms. Maybe one in five could answer for everyone else.
Fix: extend your lockdown plan to include explicit decision trees for every role on campus, including non-academic staff, visitors, and people outdoors. Then run drills that include these roles, not just the bell-rings-doors-lock procedure. If you have a school safety committee, this is the kind of work it should own - and the next article in this series describes the five questions every committee should be able to answer.
Why the same three?
Because they share a common root cause: each one is a place where the security plan exists on paper but operational reality has drifted. The propped door is a procedure problem. The camera gaps are a planning problem. The drill scope is a training problem. None of them get fixed by buying more equipment.
If your school has not had an outside set of eyes evaluate operational reality versus written policy in the last 18 months, the odds are very high that at least one of these three has drifted.
What we do about it
Our SHIELD Assessment specifically targets these three categories before anything else, because closing them produces the most safety-per-dollar of anything we recommend. If we walked your campus tomorrow and these three were already tight, we would tell you to skip the rest of the assessment and put the money into staff training instead.
If you would like both founders to walk your school, the initial walkthrough is complimentary. We will tell you whether you have one of these three, all three, or none.
About Ocean State Protection Group
Ocean State Protection Group is a Rhode Island private security consultancy founded by active-duty law enforcement officers. The firm draws on over 75 years of combined law enforcement and military experience across the founding team, including SRT operations, FLETC Active-Shooter Instructor certifications, and Tactical Combat Casualty Care instruction. Both founders attend every initial walkthrough.
Important Notice
Articles on this site reflect operational observations from active-duty law enforcement officers in private security consulting practice. They are general guidance for educational purposes. They are not legal, engineering, insurance, financial, or licensed professional advice. On-site assessment by qualified professionals is required for site-specific recommendations.
Cost ranges, vendor names, regulatory references, and grant cycle details are provided as practical context and may change without notice. Always verify current details with the relevant authority (FEMA, RIEMA, your insurance broker, your legal counsel) before relying on any specific number or procedure for your organization.
Ocean State Protection Group is not a licensed alarm or monitoring company, a guard agency, a licensed engineering firm, or a licensed insurance brokerage unless explicitly contracted in a separate signed engagement.