Visitors

Bethel Park schools regularly welcome a myriad of visitors including parents and guardians, volunteers, guest speakers, vendors, service technicians, college and military recruiters, and more. When you have that many people coming in and out of your schools every day, you must have strong safety measures in place in the event that any of the visitors shouldn't be there or is not there with the best intentions.

The district has a Safety and Crisis Plan and each school has a critical incident plan, specific to them. Each school also has a safety and security team which reviews the plan periodically with our school district police and the BP Police Department. Our school counselors, social workers and psychologists also have input into the plan. We also regularly conduct safety drills in collaboration with the BPPD, Fire Department and other community response teams.

To protect our students and staff, all visitors are asked use the following procedures upon entering our schools:
• Enter the school ONLY through the designated entry doors.
• Ring the bell for admittance and respond to the personnel on duty.
• Report directly to the front office upon entry.
• Sign-in, present photo identification (e.g. driver’s license) to obtain your clearance pass before visiting halls or classrooms.

If you or someone else is picking up your child from school, we require that you send a written notification to your child's school. The notice should state the name of the individual to whom your child should be released, the time of the release, a contact number for confirmation, and the signature of the parent or guardian. The designated person must then come to the school office, show ID and sign the child out of school before he/she will be released.

Thank you for abiding by these rules to keep all of our children as safe as possible. 

Student and staff safety is always the top priority for the Bethel Park School District. That is why Bethel Park schools employ Raptor, a district-wide school visitor screening system.Raptor provides an effective way to help schools keep unwanted visitors out while keeping track of those admitted in. The system:

By simply scanning a visitor's driver's license, other valid ID, or inputting valid identification information just one time, Raptor instantly screens for registered sex offenders in all 50 states. If a potential threat is identified, the Raptor system sends instant alerts to designated officials, including administrators and law enforcement, including our School Police Chief, via email and/or text messaging. Raptor can also check custom data bases set up by individual schools for issues such as custody and protection from abuse orders.

All visitors looking to enter Bethel Park schools during school hours are subject to the Raptor background check before they may be admitted. Once your information is entered into the system, you should not be asked to re-enter it during future visits to our schools. During the pandemic, all school visitors will also be asked a series of COVID-19-related questions as we try to mitigate the spread of coronavirus in our schools.

Parents and guardians dropping off items like forgotten lunches, musical instruments, school supplies, etc., will not be subject to the Raptor security system.

Please know that confidentiality is very important to us and the only information maintained in the database is the visitor’s name, date of birth, and photo. District staff responsible for operating the system have each received training directly from Raptor Technologies.

If you are interested in learning more about the Raptor system please feel free to access their website using the following URL: www.raptorware.com.