Johnson County schools are adding live monitoring of their buildings, increasing security at entrances and decreasing response times in emergencies, all with the help of advanced technology.
Not only does security technology help save lives during a mass casualty event such as a school shooting, it can prevent it from happening in the first place.
When Center Grove and Clark-Pleasant school administrators visited Littleton, Colo. last year, they saw a level of school security that was beyond what any Johnson County school had in place.
Live monitoring, analytics
Littleton Public Schools, which sits just four miles from Columbine High School, has a live monitoring system with analytical cameras that pick up how people typically occupy an area of the building they are in, such as walking, sitting or standing patterns. If there is unusual activity, such as someone attacking people, the camera will detect it and send photos to school police, Center Grove Schools Superintendent Rich Arkanoff said in May.
With live monitoring, officers can view footage from all school buildings in one location and respond quickly in an emergency, rather than reviewing recorded video after the fact. Center Grove hopes to have a live monitoring station as part of the $5.17 million Emergency Operations Center it plans to open in September 2020, according to school board documents.
Clark-Pleasant will be using its wall of screens displaying security footage by the time school starts in August, said Jay Staley, business director.
Center Grove plans to add analytical cameras if voters pass a referendum in November, which would increase property taxes by 11.5 cents for every $100 of assessed value. $1.06 million of the $3.1 million the district predicts it would bring in every year would go towards live monitoring, including not only analytical cameras and the wall of footage, but school safety officers and bus stop arm cameras that can capture the license plates of drivers who don’t stop for a stop arm, school officials said.
School safety officers have similar responsibilities as school resource officers, but don’t have the police power that resource officers do.
With $2.8 million from its rainy day fund and money it saved on capital projects, Clark-Pleasant schools is in the midst of adding more than 600 analytical cameras and increasing entryway security at all of its buildings by mid-October, Staley said.
“They’ll have more analytics our current cameras do not possess. All the cameras will have motion detection,” Staley said.
The cameras have directional detection, meaning if someone is blocking a path in a parking lot, for example, the camera will send a notification to administrators. The cameras can also alert school officials if a camera is offline or out of focus. While Clark-Pleasant schools was already planning to add the cameras, visiting Littleton gave the school district additional ideas about how they could be used, Staley said.
“We can have virtual lines set up, and if someone crosses those lines, (the camera) will make some kind of notification, an enter-and-exit alert if someone leaves a defined area, an appear or disappear alert if an object is in an area and is removed; we get notified,” Staley said.
“Cameras can tell if something is human or something else. We’re only notified if something is a human being and not a moth.”
Secure entryways
Clark-Pleasant’s entryways will be upgraded so if a door stays open for a longer than a normal period of time, building security officers are notified, Staley said.
While analytical cameras are new to schools in Johnson County, secured entryways are not.
Much like other districts, Edinburgh Community Schools has an entry system that includes high-definition cameras and the requirement of signing in at the front office before entering the building. The district is looking at implementing a silent alert system that puts schools on lockdown if a suspicious individual is in or around any of the schools, but there are still several options to look at, said Bob Straugh, technology director at Edinburgh schools.
Having outside entryways locked and monitored is a sign of changing times and nationwide tragedies, said Straugh, who has been with the district for two decades.
“The biggest change is, we used to have, when I first started working here, a warm, welcome environment,” Straugh said. “People would come in from town, walk to the gym. In lieu of recent events, we had to lock all the doors, down to one entryway. It’s no longer welcoming from the outside looking in; it’s fortified. I feel that’s not the way it should be, but sadly it is.”
During a Center Grove school board meeting, board member Jack Russell discussed the prevalence of school shootings nationwide and the need to be more proactive.
“These issues are country-wide,” Russell said. “Until Columbine, we never even thought we’d need anything like this. The term ‘not if, but when’ just chills my mind, thinking that could happen at Center Grove. We have to do everything we can do for prevention.”
Electronic reporting systems
Franklin schools rolled out a mobile app earlier this year for its students to report security concerns anonymously. Students used the STOPit app more than 100 times to report conflict and suspicious activity in the final two months of the school year, Operations Director Jeff Sewell said in an email.
Clark-Pleasant, Indian Creek and Center Grove schools also have electronic reporting, available online or through anonymous text message reporting. Center Grove, for example, uses the Safe Schools Alert service, which allows students to report suspicious activity anonymously online, through text or through email.
Schools are also using grant funding to improve their security.
School safety grants
On July 15, the Indiana Department of Homeland Security began accepting applications for the Secured School Safety grant, and Johnson County schools are planning to apply.
Center Grove schools received a matching grant of $50,000 five of the past six years, using the money to pay the salary of one school resource officer. The district hasn’t finalized plans for how it would use grant funding this year if it is awarded, spokesperson Stacy Conrad said.
Edinburgh schools, which doesn’t have any school resource officers, would use a grant award to help pay for its first officer, Superintendent Doug Arnold said. Edinburgh and Clark-Pleasant schools previously used the grant for technology purposes.
Edinburgh schools received a $30,600 matching school safety grant in 2014, which it used to install bulletproof glass and a buzzer system for entrances at the middle and high school, Arnold said.
Clark-Pleasant schools is applying for a $50,000 grant to pay its school resource officers. It also used its 2014 grant to add cameras and buzzer systems to the front entrances of its buildings, Staley said.
In addition to grant funding, last year, all six Johnson County school districts received handheld metal detectors from the state, with one detector for every 250 students.
One of Greenwood schools’ biggest aids in combating potential threats of violence is those metal detectors. The schools use the detectors on a reasonable suspicion basis or if the schools receive a tip that someone may be carrying a weapon, Operations Director Mike Hildebrand said.
“We rely on communication with our students to bring that up,” Hildebrand said. “We develop a rapport, talk to faculty and staff about their suspicions and concerns.”
