SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Security is being increased more quickly than planned at public schools in South Dakota's largest city in the wake of last month's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

The Sioux Falls School Board voted Monday night to accelerate $6.7 million in school-access renovations. The Argus Leader newspaper reports (http://argusne.ws/W2yDlq) that many of the projects were on the district's to-do list but did not have scheduled completion dates.

By the start of the 2014 school year, visitors to any public school in Sioux Falls will have to be let inside by a staff member and will have to pass through the administrative offices.

Twenty students and six adults were killed in the Connecticut shooting on Dec. 14. It has prompted school officials nationwide to re-evaluate security.

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