HARRISBURG -- Altoona Area School District has five full-time safety officers, 120 security cameras and weekly meetings with the city's police chief.

State Auditor General Jack Wagner holds it up as a model for school safety.

Most other Pennsylvania school districts, though, fall short when it comes to implementing safety plans and communicating them to faculty and community residents, according to a recent mail survey conducted by Mr. Wagner's office.

One district, which Mr. Wagner would not name, never reports school incidents to the local police.

His office sent surveys to 722 school districts, intermediate units, vocational-technical, cyber and charter schools in Pennsylvania, and 69 percent of them responded.

Of those responding, 89 percent had school safety plans, but most don't effectively communicate or implement those plans, Mr. Wagner told the Senate Education Committee this week.

Forty-two percent of local educational agencies -- districts, intermediate units and vo-tech schools -- and 25 percent of cyber/charter schools that responded have no school visitation policies.

Fifty-three percent of educational agencies and 36 percent of cyber/charter schools use more than one point of entry for buildings. Administrators in schools with single points of entry are better able to control who gets inside, Mr. Wagner said.

Twenty percent do not have memoranda of understanding with local police for handling reports of violence on school property, even though state law requires such agreements.

Twenty-seven percent of the educational agencies that responded lack a districtwide communication system able to instantly notify all of their schools of an emergency.

Mr. Wagner declined to release questionnaires showing the responses of individual districts and schools. The goal of the survey, he said, was to get a statewide overview of school safety procedures.

He intends to take a closer look at districts through formal audits and then to issue recommendations to the Legislature.

"Parents want and deserve a safe learning environment for their children. That is our ultimate goal," Mr. Wagner said.

That's the Senate Education Committee's goal, too, assured its chairman, James Rhoades, R-Schuylkill.

"Nothing is more important than ensuring our schools are safe," he said. "We have more work to do in this vital endeavor."