ST. GEORGE — Jeremy Cox, who serves as the net technology director for the Washington County School District, opened the special 7 a.m. meeting of the Board of Education on July 20 with a proposal to equip all campuses in Washington County with security camera systems within seven years.
“We went out to several of our elementary schools and took a look and really got a good feel of what it would look like to do if we were to do cameras in a typical elementary school,” Cox said.
Cox presented the basic floor plan of one elementary school with a projection desired amount of 15 video cameras installed for adequate coverage of the campus. Cox said most schools would be adequately equipped with about the same number of cameras. However, there still were some concerns with the expressed amount.
“The one thing you will notice about this system is there are still blind spots, and that is the thing … Unless we turn it into a prison camera system, we are never going to get rid of the blind spots,” Cox told the board. “What it does do is cover all of your major hotspots.”
The proposal would be to start with the campuses that currently do not have camera systems. Then, one by one, install and upgrade the security devices until all campuses are fully equipped by the seventh year. They also will be upgrading any heavily outdated systems.
Out of the seven years of work to install and upgrade security camera systems, each would last a minimum of 20 years. However, the plan is after the seven years, the district will restart the project and upgrade the systems that were first installed or upgraded at the beginning of the seven years, repeating the cycle. The plan is about a year out.
Other findings also revealed none of the intermediate schools within the district receive funding designated explicitly for school safety and security.
“The intermediates are paying for their own … They’ve been using their equipment money and everything else,” WCSD Business Director Brent Bills said. “Sometimes they will do fundraisers and stuff like that.”
The intermediate schools are approximately 130,000 square feet each, while elementary schools are about 45,000 square feet. Bills said the intermediate schools would need three times the number of video cameras as elementary schools.
According to the findings, about a fourth of district elementary schools are equipped with security camera systems. For security reasons, the list of those schools without security camera systems was not released.
In the past, the district contracted out the upkeep and monitoring of video cameras to private entities. In the new proposal, the idea is to move the outside contracting into internal affairs by hiring a full-time equivalent professional who will perform all the duties that the privately contracted companies previously did. The full-time employee will be an IT professional with superior knowledge in cybersecurity, working possibly as a liaison with local police and emergency response agencies.
Part of the reasoning for internally running the systems is that the privately contracted companies will be dropping clients with systems they cannot service due to older technology. The school district is one of these clients, even though the district upgraded its systems during the 2010-11 school year.
The district has paid past contracted security entities $100,000 for the service and $75,000 for the equipment. To run the upgraded systems is an estimated $175,000 per year to accomplish this proposal.
The main topic of school safety was also derailed and taken over by another national issue with school districts, namely funding.
“We are not anywhere near where we need to be,” Bills said in reference to the district’s capital budget.
For that reason, the proposed project was added to a list of other capital projects that need to be completed and is currently tabled as more planning and research are performed for the proposed school safety and surveillance systems.
The proposed project will continue to be discussed in the upcoming meetings. The district said it also plans to work on discovering methods of securing the finances needed for the completion of the tabled project, and other campuses will be surveyed and mapped out.
Lack of funding has been a hot topic for most school districts across the state as Utah has ranked for many years as No. 51 in the nation for student spending. Last year, according to nationwide statistics, Utah jumped up one spot, knocking Idaho to the rear.
However, according to the Education Data Initiative, Utah has moved even farther up in the rankings to No. 33 as of June 15. They currently pay out an average of $9,673 per pupil.
Even though the school security camera systems project is still in the works, the funding to fulfill the project’s desired outcome will decide the speed at which the desired effect of every campus with security camera systems in place is fulfilled.
“We don’t have enough money,” Bills said.
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