Pflugerville ISD is installing new, safer entryways on schools' front entrances as part of the bond project voters approved last year.

The entryways, called safety vestibules, aim to control the flow of visitors to Pflugerville ISD schools. School vestibules are installed at the front entrance and only allow people to pass through after having checked in with an office. A second set of doors is unlocked during students' arrival and departure and otherwise kept locked throughout the day.

New campuses are designed with the feature, Pflugerville ISD Deputy Superintendent Troy Galow said in an email. Existing PISD campuses will have them retrofitted to their main entrance, Galow said. There will be one vestibule per campus located at the main entrance.

Galow said the vestibules will range in price depending on the complexity of the project. He said installation factors include requirements by the city and county that hold jurisdiction over the building process.

The vestibules are part of a $4,763,000 security upgrade approved by voters in the bond election. School officials expect vestibule installation to be completed by the start of the 2015–16 school year.

Bill Laughlin, vice president of Moseley Architects in Virginia, which designs K–12 campuses, said there has been an increase in demand for safety vestibules at existing schools since the Sandy Hook shootings in December 2012 in Connecticut. However, he said new school construction has included such features for longer than that.

"We've had a number of clients call and say, 'We have this existing building, and it's wide open. So we'd like to lock that down,'" he said.

Laughlin said vestibules and training school employees and students to be aware of their surroundings are the two most basic ways of improving school security. He said when he visits schools often the side entrances are unlocked, though he said he has seen improvement in the past few years.

"If I get into a building and I don't have a badge on I get the stink eye from a staff member or I get quizzed," he said. "That's encouraging to see more of that."

Round Rock ISD finished implementing similar safe entrances last year. Round Rock ISD spokeswoman JoyLynn Occhiuzzi said the district installed the new entryways because of changes in society and wanting to make the schools are as secure as possible.

"You just don't know who's going to come into your schools, and you want to protect your students and you want to protect your staff," Occhiuzzi said.

She said parents have reacted "extremely" positively to the new entryways.

"Visitors and parents understand the need of keeping our kids and our teachers safe," she said.

She said the secure entryways do no affect students unless they arrive late to school, in which case they too must check in through the front office.

Occhiuzzi said district policy has always been to have visitors check in at the front office. The secure doorways are a mechanism to enforce the policy, she said, since visitors must pass through the front office.

Occhiuzzi said specific safety measures are kept confidential for security reasons, though she said a safety director is on staff, and the district works with local law enforcement to provide security resource officers to the schools. PISD also has a similar arrangement.

"We have conversations with them on how to improve systems in our schools," Occhiuzzi said. "It's really having a collaborative discussion on how to make a campus safer."