District Administration - November 2012 - (Page 58)

Enhancing School AccESS control take a more proactive approach. “We try to teach them that no matter what their job is they have a role in safety,” Reyka says, “and they have an obligation to pay attention.” The challenge, Reyka says, is getting teachers, even ones who are outside of their comfort zone, to stop and ask visitors with questions like: “How can I help you? Can I help you get directions? Is there a purpose here I can assist you with?” If a staff member is uncomfortable with challenging a person, they need to know how to dispatch someone there and report a potential stranger. The Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police summer conference showed the “little things” that can be done with minimal cost. Using yellow tape to make an “X” allows emergency responders to locate access to school buildings, in this case, Cherokee County schools. DISTRICT CIO Know Your Equipment the most important factor is having a well-trained student and staff population. Having a student or a teacher prop open a door with a backpack or a pebble can quickly undo the best laid plans and expensive equipment. “Security is only as good as the security chain,” Trump says. “The weakest link in any security chain is the people.” That’s because sometimes people decide to let in a fellow student or teacher who has gone outside and that person doesn’t want to be inconvenienced with walking through a secure door again. “Everyone wants security, but they don’t want to be inconvenienced,” Trump says. That can come from a teacher in a classroom that is warm in temperature and wants to prop doors open during a free period or a parent with the ‘security applies to everyone but me’ attitude when they are dropping off a lunch for their student.’ One of the biggest defenses is training staff to greet and challenge strangers with a “Good morning, may I help you?” question, Trump says. In Sarasota, all new employees get trained on safety and security to help curb such potential problems and have them Another big mistake many schools make when it comes to access control is installing equipment they don’t fully use. “Your hardware is only as good as the people using it,” says Chuck Hibbert, a national school security consultant and the retired director of security for Wayne Township Schools in Indianapolis. “Its effectiveness drops without training on how to use it.” Hibbert says many schools aren’t get- “Every school should ask itself, ‘how long are we going to keep recordings’— and it should be standardized.” —Chuck Hibbert, national school security consultant end user is familiar with how to do it. Many of the cameras also have a motion detection system, so if someone walks in front of camera B it automatically begins recording, but won’t record overnight to save space. That also means schools must have a lot of bandwidth to transmit data, particularly if a district has an integrated system where all data are transmitted over the same channels. Every school that has a camera system should have an image retention policy, which Hibbert says is ideally 30 days. “Every school should ask itself, how long are we going to keep recordings,” Hibbert says, “and it should be standardized.” If a system can only maintain 15 days of images, then your policy shouldn’t exceed that period. That protects the school district, Hibbert says, especially if a parent wants to see an image or the school is subpoenaed in court for a civil or criminal case, the school can say “we only maintain 10 school days or 12 school days of images.” And any time Sarasota County Schools considers buying and implementing new technology, they weigh a few factors first. “It’s important that service be reliable and effective, so we don’t have to budget for how to support it,” Reyka says. Prior to purchasing, they research and try to maintain a standardization of technology to help minimize costs. They have vendors train their staff to ensure their technicians are up to speed and can service any new equipment. Small Things, Big Differences ting the most out of their camera systems, which are much smarter than their predecessors. Today’s cameras have the capability of retaining images on the cameras themselves, Hibbert says, via microprocessors which are like mini computers. When the image is needed, it can be downloaded to the server, as long as the School district leaders have many options to upgrade their security systems. With approximately 10,000 school districts in the nation, many schools have switched to proximity key cards, which can be updated and deactivated more easily and efficiently than using master keys that have to be changed at a large expense if one is lost or stolen. Kissel started in 1999, with 47 schools in the district, 18 of which use proximity keys. Additionally, all staff, including administrators, must wear ID District Administration 58 November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - November 2012

District Administration - November 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Flipping the Script in K12
Sustainable Professional Development
Brave New World of Teacher Evaluation
Philadelphia’s “Servant- Leader” Superintendent
Enhancing School Access Control
New Products
Professional Opinion
New Directions

District Administration - November 2012