Guidepost Assessment: Holding Safety to the Highest Standard

October 26th, 2022 /
Spencer Tuinei /
News, Public Relations, Safety and Security Campaign, Schools, Student Services

The term “above and beyond” can quickly become a stale cliche, but in the case of our district’s endeavors, it’s a fitting adage.

Provo City School District’s Safety and Security Committee procured services from Guidepost Solutions LLC to conduct a district-wide school and facilities safety and security assessment.

Guidepost Solutions is, to quote their website, “a leader in domestic and international investigations, compliance solutions, monitoring, and security and technology consulting.” Their investigative team includes former federal prosecutors from several U.S. Attorney’s Offices, intelligence officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, Special Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Secret Service. Guidepost’s approach is data-driven and comprehensive, drawing on vulnerability measurement tools to secure global companies, banks, stadiums, and esteemed university campuses like USC, Oxford, and Stanford.

To put the assessment in simple terms, working with Guidepost means that our schools will ultimately offer superior safety and security than most schools nationwide.

The assessments focused on identifying physical security conditions and reviewing existing operational policies and procedures. The assessments offer a baseline for our district to plan and implement their recommendations to enhance school safety and measures and create safe schools in continuing building projects according to our district’s allocated funding. The review addressed operational issues, safety, and security policies and procedures, training, visitor management, emergency preparedness, electronic systems, architectural issues, environmental and workplace concerns, and more to ensure that we tailor each school to be as safe as possible.

While we can’t provide specific details of the assessment, we can promise that our Safety and Security Committee is hard at work in making the assessment’s outline a reality. We can point to secured vestibules and our incoming Visitor Management System as one example of Guidepost implementation as we improve guest filtration and tracking on campus.

And, to safeguard each plan’s integrity, we can’t divulge scores or methodology, but we can say that our district exceeds state standards. We’re only moving forward from here, and we promise to continue making our schools the safest they can be.