New Jersey school visitor management law
New Jersey requires districts to lock exterior doors and send everyone seeking entry to the main entrance; a secure vestibule is required only where the building's footprint allows and funding is available.
Every fact checked against the official source by an independent reviewer · Last verified October 26, 2026
What does the New Jersey law require?
For new school construction and existing school buildings, a district or the Schools Development Authority "shall" take a list of security measures. Districts must lock exterior doors, and when doors are in use for a large entry or exit, staff and monitor them. Districts must clearly mark the main entrance and make it easy to see and recognize. Districts must keep a strict key protocol: staff sign for keys and return them at the end of each school year.
What are the rules for visitors at the door?
Districts must adopt policies that strictly ban propping doors open, tell students and staff not to open a door for anyone, and direct all people seeking entry to the main entrance. New and existing buildings must use an access control system with remote unlocking, an intercom and fixed cameras at the main entrance, and at other entrances as funding permits. Where a secure vestibule exists, the exterior entrance lets a visitor into the vestibule only, and the doors to the rest of the building stay locked.
What does new construction need?
A single public entrance for the school day, with a security vestibule whose interior doors are released by school security or other staff. Access control systems that allow remote locking and unlocking of all building access doors. Keyless locks on the interior doors of rooms that will serve as safe havens during lockdowns. The Commissioner of Education, consulting the Schools Development Authority, may revise these standards.
Separately, another law says teachers must be required to keep room and building doors and exits unlocked during school hours, except during an emergency lockdown or a lockdown drill.
When did it take effect?
The security standards law, P.L.2016, c.79, was approved December 5, 2016.
How can schools pay for it?
District emergency reserve funds may pay for school security improvements, which can include an automatic door locking system for access control and a badge system for school employees. State school-facilities bond money may fund school facilities projects designed to improve school security. The Securing Our Children's Future Bond Act set aside $350,000,000 for county vocational school grants and school security project grants combined. The FY2027 budget, P.L.2026, c.27, lists Security Aid at $424,009,000 and Nonpublic Security Aid at $32,550,000, and says each district gets $217 for each nonpublic school student in it.
How can QuickSecure help?
Visitors sign themselves in at an iPad kiosk in your front office by scanning their driver's license or state ID.
Each visitor gets a printed badge, and checks out by scanning the badge's code on the way out.
Visitors are checked against the sex-offender registry and your school's own block list before they're let in.
When a visitor needs a second look, front-office staff get an alert and approve or deny entry from their phones.
Only guardians and contacts your school has authorized can pick up a student. A one-time exception needs an administrator's approval, and it's logged.
Every visit is kept in a log your administrators can search.
This is not a statement that any product satisfies New Jersey's requirements; that reading belongs to your district and its counsel.