Reading, ’riting, and readiness: Today’s
schools have to focus on safety and security issues as well as
education. School facilities managers are often challenged to
create an open educational environment that is closed to
intruders and other dangers. By identifying best practices and
emerging technology, school professionals are creating safer
facilities and achieving greater efficiencies.
All-hazard Approach Promotes Best Practices
“Sometimes security is on one track and
fire-safety issues are on another track, sometimes they
contradict each other or take away resources, so we are trying
to make this an all-hazard approach to solving their security
problems,” says Don Bliss, director, Center for Infrastructure
Expertise, National Infrastructure Center, Portsmouth, NH. The
center – a not-for-profit, federally funded applied research
group – is dedicated to helping state and local governments
and industry find better solutions to protect their critical
infrastructure from a homeland security and natural hazards
perspective.
A retired state fire marshal in New
Hampshire and former president of the National Association of
State Fire Marshals, Bliss has a long history working with
schools and colleges on fire prevention, fire code
enforcement, and public education, as well as fire
investigations. According to Bliss, while schools are
generally good about holding fire drills, more than 5,000
fires in U.S. schools are reported annually. In addition to
dealing with these issues, school officials are struggling to
make their buildings more secure from criminals with video
cameras, metal detectors, and access control
systems.
School overcrowding is another safety
issue, with some schools using storage rooms and temporary
buildings as classroom space. “Another challenge is that many
states are doing a lot of additions, renovations, and new
construction and [want to ensure] these buildings are safe,
especially when school districts are looking to build at the
lowest possible costs,” says Bliss.
In New Hampshire, all renovations and
capital construction are reviewed by the State Fire Marshal
office. Bliss stresses the importance of school districts,
architects, and engineers working with fire officials early in
the construction process. He also encourages K-12 school
facilities managers to collaborate with fire departments for
annual inspections.
The college environment presents a
different range of behaviors and dangers, including smoking,
drug and alcohol use, overused electrical outlets, and
substandard off-campus housing. In New Hampshire, all of the
state’s university system dormitories are protected by
sprinklers through voluntary compliance. “Obviously, whenever
there is a disaster, interest peaks for a while, but then it
drops off,” says Bliss. An advocate of sprinklers in dorms,
Bliss knows it is a struggle to keep life-safety a
priority.
The Center for Infrastructure Expertise
and state fire marshals are collaborating to find new
technologies and best practices for schools. With a recent
grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the center
has launched 10 pilot sites and has created partnerships with
security manufacturers and other associations.
Beta Sites Test Effectiveness of Information
“Security has gone from worrying about
kids fighting each other, to worrying about people coming on
campus who do not belong there, to armed issues,” says Stan
Rounds, superintendent of schools, Hobbs Municipal Schools,
Hobbs, MN. With 22 years of experience as a superintendent,
Rounds has seen the tremendous changes in school security.
Serving 7,500 students, the Hobbs school district is comprised
of 50 buildings in a “big small town” environment.
“What we have been looking for is a good,
comprehensive way to communicate with our parents, our
community, our law enforcement. We want to deliver information
in real-time that is clear and fully correct,” says Rounds.
The school district is serving as a beta test site for
Honeywell Instant Alert for Schools, an automated emergency
notification and communication system from Morris Township,
NJ-based Honeywell.
In the past, the school relied on the old
familiar telephone tree, which was time-consuming and faulty.
Now in the event of an incidence, the school can send
information to parents’ phones, pagers, and e-mail accounts,
as well as to the community at large. “This creates a safer
environment for the students and an informed environment for
the public,” says Rounds. The U.S. Department of Education has
specified that an emergency communication system should be
part of every school’s crisis planning.
Parents in the Hobbs district have the
option to participate in the testing. “Parents have total
control – parents go into the website and rank [the] order of
types of information [they] want to receive and in which
medium,” says Laura Farnham, vice president, global marketing,
Honeywell Building Solutions, Minneapolis.
Currently, four schools in Virginia,
California, Indiana, and New Mexico are involved in beta
testing the communications system. Farnham believes the system
has potential beyond emergencies and could be an important
tool in keeping parents informed, as opposed to newsletters in
backpacks. Adds Farnham, “We discovered that once you have the
infrastructure in place, it can be used for daily
communication. We are finding it is a great starting point in
talking about preparedness.”
Chips Control/Track Access
The bucolic campus of Thomas College,
Waterville, ME, has been the image of peace and quiet for over
100 years. Focusing on business, education, and technology
majors, the college has ramped up its security in recent years
in response to students’ and parents’ concerns. “[The concern]
has evolved over time. Students and parents alike have asked
more and more about the types of security we have, especially
in our residence halls,” says Christopher Rhoda, vice
president, IT Serv-ices, at Thomas College.
Traditionally, this small, rural campus
did not have a standardized student ID card system. However,
Thomas College has seen great growth and recently added a new
residence hall, expanding its residence capacity by 30
percent. The college implemented a student ID card with an
embedded chip from Honeywell. Now, the school can control
access to facilities as well as areas inside buildings, such
as computer labs or suites. Adds Rhoda, “We are able to
segment buildings and define different areas.”
“The tracking portion has really been the
best,” says Rhoda. A few months ago, a large and bulky change
machine was stolen from one of the residence halls. “This
thing is four feet high by three feet wide by two feet deep
and weighs a ton. The fact that it walked off was no small
feat,” jokes Rhoda. By investigating its door log, the college
was able to nab the culprits.
Pleased with its recent success, Thomas
College plans to expand its security outlook and to continue
to provide its students with a feeling of safety. “One of the
things I saw in the 18 years I have been involved with
security is that an improperly installed security system can
change the entire culture of a business or a school,” says
Greg Taylor, security solutions program manager, Global
Marketing and Business Development, Honeywell Building
Solutions, Toronto, ON, Canada.
According to Taylor, a well-designed and
implemented security system creates an open, yet safe,
environment. For example, with a properly designed video
system, schools can track buses and students’ access and
egress. This gives parents an estimated time of arrival for
students when it is necessary to investigate
incidents.
The approach to safety in educational
facilities has turned a new page. Instead of assuming a sense
of security, schools, large and small, are making safety
concerns an integral part of the educational mission. The
eight leading causes of child injury are preventable. To
promote safety, the Quincy, MA-based National Fire Protection
Association (NFPA) has created an age-appropriate Injury
Prevention Curriculum known as RiskWatch that integrates
safety training into other subject areas, such as science or
physical education. This change in thinking is leading to a
truly safe haven for the future of education.
Regina Raiford Babcock (regina.raifordbabcock@buildingsmedia.com) is senior editor at
Buildings magazine.
School
Shootings
After the tragedy ...
By Scott Gardiner
For most schools, reports of campus
shootings seem a distant nightmare. Sadly, that nightmare
became a reality at Grossmont Union School District, an
11-high school system with 24,000 students in San Diego
County. In 2001, two separate shooting incidents happened
back-to-back over a two-week period. Immediately, Grossmont
searched for an effective, economical way to protect its
campuses.
Grossmont became the initial reference
site for the e-Surveillance system from Park Ridge, NJ-based
Sony, which allows administrators and law enforcement officers
to act on emergency situations in real-time with digital video
surveillance over TCP/IP networks. Running on a Cisco
infrastructure, this solution consists of fixed and
pan/tilt/zoom IP addressable cameras with built-in Web servers
and Ethernet ports, Sony Real Shot™ camera recording and video
management software, and network-attached servers for storage
and archival retrieval.
For this pilot project, Warren Williams,
assistant superintendent for information and technology
services at Grossmont, outfitted two of the district’s
campuses with the e-Surveillance system. Now, JPEG data files
can be accessed, monitored, recorded, and printed anywhere on
the network by authorized personnel – crucial advantages
during emergency situations or to help reconstruct events from
archived material.
In just a few months, Williams saw far
greater applications and opportunities than originally
imagined. Besides fostering a safe learning environment for
the district’s students, Grossmont school district now reports
that vandalism and inappropriate use of school facilities and
resources have dropped significantly. Cost savings from
maintaining the physical plant, along with insurance
reductions, have been some of the unexpected
returns.
Before the incidents at Grossmont, local
police patrol covered different schools. “We understood that
if we had been able to see the problem developing – people on
the campus that shouldn’t be – perhaps we could have done
something,” Williams explains. The new system delivers visual
information wherever and whenever needed in real-time. The
system’s true utility begins with the automated ability to
communicate alarm events. Motion sensor-equipped cameras, as
well as other triggering criteria (e.g. access control),
signal school officials on call. Then, authorized personnel
can take control of the cameras to investigate the situation
immediately from any networked computer. Wireless capabilities
allow police patrol cars with laptop and/or handheld computers
to continue to keep an eye on events while responding to the
scene. All the while, the system records images on the secure,
RAID redundant server.
“We can program the system to respond to
alarm events numerous ways. It can send e-mail or call a cell
phone,” Williams notes. Besides security functions, an
additional camera can webcast sporting events at the school
stadium. In time, the system may be used for educational
purposes as well. Adding cameras to classrooms will let
experienced teachers demonstrate best practices to their
colleagues or help in confronting students with discipline
issues.
Video information via wireless can be
transmitted both to cruisers with laptops and to foot patrols
with handheld computers. Police are confident that the new
tools will give them what they need to address any future
situation.
“The system is essentially
maintenance-free and training staff to use it is simple,” says
Williams. The new system is expected to lower future staffing
costs. The school district is also renegotiating with its
insurance underwriters to reflect the changes brought by the
new security system. “We’re a safer place now. The insurance
savings will likely be significant enough to justify costs,”
Williams adds.
Typically, according to Williams, the
introduction of a pilot system is followed by lengthy analysis
and evaluation. Here, the system’s success in providing
security, plus the many value-adds, has immediately won over
the district’s governing board.
The arrival of the Sony e-Surveillance
system at the Grossmont School District closes one chapter in
the institution’s history while opening a new one. Now, its
demonstrable value has restored confidence and will continue
to provide the sense of security essential to maintaining a
healthy learning environment.
Scott Gardiner is an associate with
Sony Electronics’ Corporate Communications Department, Park
Ridge, NJ. More information on security systems offered
through Sony is available at (www.sony.com/security).
