They look like small snow globes, except less conspicuous. A set of 20 newly-installed video cameras capture videos of students as they enter and leave bathrooms, walk through nearly every hallway at IHS, or relax in H-Courtyard. Students who litter in bathrooms, trigger false fire alarms, or vandalize vending machines may feel little remorse. But they’re now guaranteed to regret one thing: being videotaped.
Principal Jason Trumble said the new cameras, purchased through the district’s IT budget and installed mid-February, replaced the 17 antiquated cameras that were unreliable and unstable. These new cameras come with ethernet-powered connectivity and zooming capabilities, district Director of Technology David Lima said. As of press time, Mr. Lima did not respond to a request for the cost of the new cameras.
Mr. Trumble said the cameras are not meant to be a means of surveillance but of safety and resolving incidents. “When we had an incident that might’ve taken us hours to find out what happened, we can now just play the tape back and know what happened,” Mr. Trumble said. “It’s not like we’re watching who’s moving where.” Nobody is in a room watching the videos live.
Employed throughout hallways, cameras capture any misdeeds on tape as irrefutable evidence, particularly around high-traffic areas like the cafeteria, hallways between F and G-buildings, around bathrooms and locker rooms, in front of the gymnasiums, and H-Courtyard. No cameras are installed in locker rooms, bathrooms, or classrooms. Video recordings, which are kept for a few weeks, better equip the administrators to track down incidents, Mr. Trumble said. The length of time it takes for administrators to search through hours of video to track incidents remains to be seen.
In addition to the cameras in the building, there have also been mounted on school buses for a decade, Mr. Trumble said. Just as the cameras in the building allow him to see who broke into a vending machine or stole a student’s phone, cameras on school buses can help identify and track disruptive behavior when the bus driver is focused on driving.
As safety remains a pressing concern, administrators are also seeking new ways to provide a sense of safety to students, staff members and parents through technology.
Additional security enhancements may include moving away from the hard-key system to a swype-card system for entrance doors. A lost swype card could be deactivated unlike a lost key that may give illicit access to an intruder.
Further, such a system would allow a greater degree of flexibility of allowing customized access to teachers and staff. “If I’ve got a teacher who teaches in H-building and does the ping pong club in B-building, he now needs keys to get into B-building,” Mr. Trumble said. “Whereas if we had a swype card we could authorize him to go wherever he needed to conveniently.”
Such upgrades would be implemented in a comprehensive plan developed in conjunction with the BoE and the district’s Facilities Committee. Funds would be drawn from the state’s Smart Bonds or the IT budget.
Regardless of what new devices or policies the school implements, Mr. Trumble said he would aim to preserve the sense of open community in the school. “I don’t expect to move away from our open-door policy around the school,” he said. “Limiting student movement around the building wouldn’t be optimal.”