Following the recent college shootings in Oregon, Texas and Arizona, schools nationwide are rightfully investigating ways to strengthen their building security. More than ever, school safety is in the news. While many are placing the eye of scrutiny on guns, others are choosing to place it on physical accessibility.

After all, if the bad guys can't get in, all talk of gun carrying is moot. Now, there are good ways and bad ways to go about this — there are also some dangerous ways. This article will attempt to discuss them all.

Entryways and evacuation

If a person meaning to do harm approached a school or college campus, the first line of defense is always the front, side or back door.

The importance of a locked door can never overstated. In physical access, the door is the first element of security and must be attended to. This summer, long before the recent spate of school shootings had happened, many schools took the opportunity to upgrade their security systems.

For example, in Port Huron, Michigan, schools added security measures that included changes to building entryways to help guide visitors toward the main offices, said Kate Peternel, the school district's executive director of business services.

Similarly, schools in Marlette, Michigan, have already created secure entrances for its elementary and high schools and has already put proper access control systems in place. None of these changes were in response to any one event, they were more preventative in theory. According to Marlette Junior/Senior High School principal Kyle Wood, these projects had been carried out two years prior with bond money.

In 2015, the school district expanded a new lock-down procedure that had been adopted in 2013-14, Wood said. Based on best practices for survival during a traumatic event, the new procedure — unlike earlier versions — includes evacuation measures.

"A traditional lockdown has teachers and students lock the door and sit in the room and wait," Wood said. The new procedure "builds on the lockdown by allowing teachers and students to make decisions based on the information they have. For example, if the threat is on one side of the building, the other side would evacuate."

High-tech expenses

If the common-sense security expansion in Michigan can be considered good, then the measures taken by an Indiana high school may be considered great.

Southwestern High school in Shelbyville, Indiana, has been called the "safest school in America" and has been featured on the Today Show for the extra steps it has taken to avoid tragedies.

The extra steps include bulletproof doors, hallway cameras that feed directly to the local sheriff's office, and even ceiling smoke canisters that can be detonated in hallways to visually impair an attacker or active shooter. While the steps may seem a bit excessive to some, others have called the new measures "revolutionary."

However, one thing is certain: The changes weren't cheap. The top-of-the-line security system was installed for $400,000 after the Indiana Sheriff's Association selected the school as a test site. For the record, the system was funded almost entirely by Net Talon, the Virginia security company behind the design. Southwestern High School also used grant money to cover some remaining costs.

And let's be clear: Cost is, and should be, an issue.

While schools such as the ones in the aforementioned Michigan district chose the cost-effective approach of enhancing previously existing measures, Southwestern High is an example of a school building entirely new security systems from the ground up.

According to Lindsey Burke, a Will Skillman Fellow in Education at the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity, the high-tech, top-of-the-line type of approach to security systems can be extremely costly. And while Southwestern was able to get funding, Burke suggests that schools look for funding locally rather than depend on federal funding or grants.

Still, Burke argues, can one really put a price of the peace of mind that school security brings?

"I don’t know if there's anything more pressing than safety," she said. "And we know from the data that when you interview parents, their number-one concern when they're looking for a school, way before academics, is safety."

Flood of security devices

For every positive step in physical access and building security, there are at least two steps backward.

Following the recent spate of college campus shootings — and in the ever-looming shadow of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre — people are understandably anxious about ensuring the safety of students, as well as teachers, staff and onsite officials.

As a result there have been a number of devices, locks and barriers invented in recent years, all with varying degrees of usefulness and legality.

According to a Washington Post article on the subject, many first-time inventors have flooded the market with new school-safety inventions. Many of the inventors are parents or teachers who are understandably scared and fearful for their lives and the lives of their children/students. The devices range from portable door locks to door barricades, from bulletproof whiteboards to bulletproof backpacks.

According to HIS, these products join a school security market that was expected to reach $720 million only a year ago, in 2014.

The article continues saying that in Jefferson Hills, Pennsylvania, a school maintenance man invented an emergency door lock. Students at Banneker High School in Washington, D.C., won a grant to develop a sleeve that jams a door's hydraulic closer.

A group of teachers in Muscatine, Iowa, formed Fighting Chance Solutions to sell something similar. A company in Burlington, Vermont, released its Social Sentinel app to scour social media for signs of a school threat. And a father in Williamston, Michigan, created The Boot, a steel bar that blockades a classroom door.

Many of these new inventions, while well intentioned, are simply impractical. Meanwhile, others on the list may be illegal. There aren't many ways to support a technology that, while protecting students from a possible school shooting, could turn a classroom into a fire trap.

To be clear, any device that blocks students' ability to safely evacuate a classroom should be looked into closely. The chance and risk of something going wrong may be too great.

In the end, whether good, bad or ugly, school security as a concept happens to be on the minds of anyone who can turn on a television and watch current events. That being the case, there will always be new and innovative attempts at securing school buildings.

Whether the attempts turn out productive depends on which path the school district or officials choose.