Pickett High Gets New Doorknobs For Security

Pickett County Schools spent over $17,000 to purchase forty doorknobs for the gymnasium and classrooms throughout the high school.

Director of Schools Diane Elder said students have figured out how to push on locked doorknobs in a certain way and turn them to open doors. Elder said all those knobs need to be replaced because it is a breach of security to have students getting past them.

“It’s expensive and I ask them, I said ‘So what’s going to prevent them from doing the same thing?'” Elder said. “They’re made different. The way they’re made we were assured they would be tamper-proof and we got them from Trimble.”

Elder said the school had never had issues with these doorknobs and locks until this school year. Elder said she thinks students are only doing it as a quick way to get into a classroom because there have not been any issues with damage or theft.

“I don’t know what’s going with it,” Elder said. “But they’ve learned to do that and it saves them time, they can just walk right into the classroom if the door’s locked.”

Elder said the purchase only paid for the knobs and school employees will have to install them. Elder said the knobs should arrive this week and will start being put into the school immediately.

“I guess I was a little bit dumbfounded to know that they would even try to do that,” Elder said. “But what gave them the idea, you know, who taught them how to do that, did they Google it or what, I don’t know.”

Elder said the students who had been breaking into rooms with this method have been reprimanded.