Thursday night, DISD board members approved spending $4.5 million to beef up school security at all its elementary schools.

Upgrades would include an intercom, eight-camera surveillance system, employee card readers and peepholes in every one of it’s 1,400 portable buildings.

“I think it’s long overdue,” says Oscar Nandayapa, Principal of Sam Houston Elementary in Dallas. “We will closely monitor who will come in and who doesn’t. Right now, as it is when the bell rings and we let them in, we don’t know who comes in those doors.”

Sam Houston is one of many campuses without any of the security upgrades.

The school is 104 years old.