North Bend Schools Unified Security Systems
Summary
North Bend Central School District (NBCPS) serves a 1200-person community in the southwest corner of Dodge County, Nebraska. The school district recently took a unified approach to security with Security Center Omnicast™ video surveillance and Security Center Synergis™ access control, to help better protect students.
North Bend Central School District (NBCPS) serves a 1200-person community in the southwest corner of Dodge County, Nebraska. Its facilities include a PK-6 elementary school and a central junior-senior high school campus, which accommodates approximately 560 students. While North Bend is a close-knit community and usually devoid of serious risk, NBCPS always stays vigilant in assuring its students and faculty are safe.
The company
The school district had been using a very small analog DVR camera system to track minor incidents of vandalism in its high school building, and doors to both buildings were secured by keys. The manual process of locking and unlocking doors and tracking keys was tedious and cumbersome. Upon receiving a large dollar federal bond, the school district planned a major infrastructure improvement which included a complete security upgrade.
The challenge
“Knowing our school is secure and important events are being recorded [with Security Center] has not only allowed us to increase district safety, but we have also maximized our staff resources.”
Jim Cody, Technology Coordinator, NBCPS
Results
Today, NBCPS is using Security Center to manage a total of 36 network cameras from Axis Communications and 15 HID Global door readers and controllers across both buildings. According to Cody, “Our staff are not the most technical, but the software has been so easy to use. We have solved several problems that we could not have solved years ago when we didn’t have this system in place.”
NBCPS is using Security Center mainly for after-the-fact investigations, yet rotating video feeds are consistently displayed on monitors in administration offices. Being able to quickly locate, time-stamp and export video as evidence has proven extremely useful to identify a suspect who had damaged school property during a school event and also provided video evidence to parties with different recounts of a traffic accident that was caught on camera.
The solution
Automated door schedules
NBCPS has pre-configured the access control system to automatically lock and unlock the main entrances and exits of buildings according to school schedules. “It’s all automatic,” said Cody.
Community access made easy
The NBCPS facility managers easily make schedule adjustments to accommodate different community events or special exceptions. They can also quickly activate or de-activate cards as required.
Savings with motion detection
At NBCPS, video is set to record on motion. “We’re a small district. Having motion detection has saved us a lot of time searching for video and minimized storage costs,” explained Cody.
Maximizing staff time
Rather than having staff members keep an eye on things between classes, kids know that the cameras are watching. Remote monitoring also saves staff time in handling investigations from home.