Working with school safety personnel, students gain drone operation skills and credits toward graduation.
“The team will fly the drone over the stadium, and it can be an extra set of eyes on the perimeter,” Johnson says. “We’ve had some incidents where individuals throw a bag or something over a gate; the drone was able to capture that, and resources were sent to intervene safely. It records video, so it can also serve as an expert witness in an incident.”
LEARN MORE: Camera upgrades at a California district result in clearer videos.
Connected Solutions Offer a Comprehensive Look at Campus Activity
North Carolina’s Iredell-Statesville Schools, encompassing approximately 2,500 employees and 21,000 students, installed vape sensors from Verkada in 2018 that can detect particulates in the air and send a text or email to alert an administrator, according to COO Mark Shinkaruk.
“It resembles a smoke detector,” Shinkaruk says. “They’re linked to our camera system, so you can actually follow the graph of when the vape particulates are high and then see who’s outside of the bathroom in the hallway, in an effort to combat the vaping epidemic we are having in middle and high school.”
The district has since added other physical safety solutions from Verkada, including a video intercom entry system, which can be used to remotely unlock or lock doors. It also added more than 1,700 hybrid cloud security cameras that offer a more user-friendly, nuanced experience than the previous system, says Electronics and IT Supervisor William Perry.
If a security incident occurs, local law enforcement agencies can easily access the Verkada system remotely using login information provided by the district. The cameras’ face recognition feature will flag any individual whose photo has been uploaded — due to a domestic violence protection order, for example — and let the administration know that person is on campus.
“If there is a subject reported in a red hoodie, we can put that into the AI search bar and it will pull every individual that matches that description and tell us where they’re located,” Perry says. “It’s pretty incredible.”
With just a few full-time electronics department employees on staff, having a unified suite of security solutions has been helpful, Perry says. They can rely on the provider to handle periodic firmware updates, and the system’s web-based access lets district officials promptly investigate any student- or employee-related allegations.
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