Jun
1, 2004 12:00 PM
Council Bluffs Community School District, a 21-school
system comprised of grade schools, junior highs and high schools
in Council Bluff, Iowa, recently installed an IP-based video security
system that includes Toshiba Surveillix digital video recorders
(DVRs).
“As
a safety and security measure it was decided to add Toshiba security
cameras to our schools,” said Dr. Jo Campbell, assistant
superintendent of the Council Bluffs Community School Council.
“The effort had to be financed through grants, and a plan
was laid out to install cameras in the most at-risk schools first
and then all of the secondary and finally the remaining elementary
schools.”
Greg Smith,
a sales engineer for Barone Security Systems, Omaha, Neb., helped
install the pilot program of Toshiba Surveillix DVRs and IK-644A
day/night cameras into three Council Bluffs schools. Following
the success of that program, Barone Security extended the Toshiba
system district-wide.
According
to Smith, the Toshiba Surveillix system enables school district
administrators and other authorized personnel to actively monitor
the events of several locations simultaneously in real-time over
the district's LAN infrastructure. Equipped with Toshiba's Central
Station software, the Surveillix units make it easy for administrators
to remotely manage, backup, search and configure images from any
networked computer, whether they are in school, at home or traveling.
“The
cameras have paid for themselves in the documentation of vandalism
and have helped create a more secure environment for our students,”
Campbell says. “The first week the cameras were in that
school they fully documented the vandals. The cooperating police
were thrilled to have everything captured on digital video
