With growing concerns about unauthorized visitors on school grounds, South Carolina’s Spartanburg School District 4 is upping its level of security, beginning with a cutting-edge access control system at Woodruff Primary School. The system, which utilizes proximity card technology, is the first of its kind to be installed in a K-12 school in the state.

Special proximity card scanners will be installed at each of Woodruff external doors allowing teachers to waive their cards to gain access to locked school facilities. In order to enter the school, the cardholder must hold the proximity card four to six inches from the reader.
One problem the system will work to solve is the common practice of teachers propping external doors open, especially near playground areas, to let children come and go. This opens the door, so to speak, for random intruders to easily slip into the school. The new access control system will be programmed to sound an alarm at the district office to signal when a door is propped open at Woodruff Primary, effectively forbidding anyone from leaving external doors ajar.
The system can also be programmed to allow individual cardholders to only enter the school during specific hours on specific days of the week. In addition, it features a computer tracking system, to be housed at the district office, that can detect who is entering the facility when. If a teacher or administrator loses a card, it can easily be deleted from the system before falling into the wrong hands.
While access control systems in schools aren’t entirely revolutionary, the use of proximity card technology in this area is a relatively new trend. Other technologies such as bar codes and magnetic stripes, while effective, don’t offer the same level of security, durability, and intelligent functionality as proximity card systems when it comes to access control.
Read more in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal