School visitor badges provide a simple means of accounting for the presence of visitors who are not typically present in the building. Most likely, these visitors will be parents coming in to meet with their child's teachers or counselors. Visitors may also include alumni or families that are considering moving into the area and who would like to inspect the schools before deciding where their children should go.

Making a Good Impression on School Visitors

Schools, like companies, should strive to make a good impression on their guests, whatever the guests' business may be. Part of doing so is ensuring that visitors feel as though the school is safe, yet not making them feel as though they just walked into a military installation. To walk this fine line between sufficient but not overwhelming security, one option is to incorporate visitor badges into your security system.

Visitors should be required to sign into the building, and the most logical place for this to occur in schools is the main office. At the same time, visitor badges can be distributed by the receptionist. When guests wear visible passes, security guards will be able to spot individuals who do not have visitor badges and inquire as to why they do not have them.

To prevent people from re-using old visitor badges, there are essentially two options. You can try to collect all visitor badges before guests leave the building--but doing so requires having someone stationed at every exit throughout the day. A more reasonable solution is to consider expiring badges that change in appearance after a pre-determined amount of time, thereby making old visitor badges useless. These simple additions to your security practices can improve the school's safety while not inspiring fear in your visitors.