Don't Let Them Hurt Our Children

Mar 1, 2003 12:00 PM

With federal and state agencies working feverishly to reduce their exposure to terrorist attack, and with “elevated threat levels” on the minds of Americans, would anything be more devastating than an attack on our children?

Jim Kelly has spent many a sleepless night contemplating that question. “We've put forth a lot of effort to protect our airports and utilities, but comparatively little attention has been paid to protecting our most valuable — and vulnerable — assets, our elementary schools,” he says.

The Sept. 11 attacks only deepened the concerns that motivated Kelly, chief of the Palm Beach County (Fla.) School District Police Department, to embark on his mission to protect schools 27 years ago. Kelly was one of the original four school resource officers (SROs) hired by the school district in 1978. Since that time, the department has grown to 137 police officers and 63 technical and administrative staff members. The department is rated among the top in the nation, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers. “Our schools contain our most precious resources — our children,” Kelly explains. “My mission, and that of the police department, is to provide a learning environment that is both secure and caring, where students are not distracted with concerns about their safety.”

That is no small task, considering the scope of the district's operations. The district is the nation's 14th largest, with more than 170 facilities responsible for nearly 162,000 K-12 students, plus 18,000 teachers and administrative staff. The district is socioeconomically diverse, ranging from rural to metropolitan, from poverty-line to exceptionally affluent. The district had its first taste of the kind of violence that frequently shocks the nation when, in May 2000, a seventh-grade student shot and killed a teacher in the classroom of a middle school. “These tragedies have shown us that no community is immune,” Kelly says. “And when you add the publicity that national media coverage provides, we are sending a message to the terrorists that if you really want to impact us, go after our children.”

The Difference Leadership Makes

In order to provide appropriate protection, the first part of Kelly's job is securing a budget. Currently, the police department's overall annual budget is $12 million, which is divided among police staffing and systems, such as access control, CCTV, intrusion alarms, and other physical security measures. “We've always had to battle for the money we needed because anything we purchased was seen as taking away from direct, instructional purposes,” says Ron Plucinski, security systems manager for the PBCSD Police Department. To keep the security programs from appearing to take away from teaching programs, Kelly is lobbying for state legislation to put security in a new budget category, which should make the school board less inhibited when considering security funding requests.

Kelly has also sought grants from the National Institute of Justice for the creation of a prototype training facility in a building the district recently purchased from IBM. “The training center will be a real-life middle school and will function similarly to a teaching hospital,” Kelly says. “We will be able to train a high volume of teachers and security and maintenance personnel from around the nation in the best use of programs and technology.”

Kelly believes the school, located in Boca Raton, Fla., would be the only one of its kind in the U.S. The facility is scheduled to begin operations in August 2004 or earlier if the grants are awarded.

Kelly has also given a voice to the security efforts within the district. He has regular meetings with principals and department heads to enlist their support in compliance with security and safety programs. Historically, teachers have been reluctant to accept new systems because they feel that they interfere with the teaching process. But modern electronic security systems have become much more unobtrusive and accepted. “Since Sept. 11, they not only accept but expect the security policies and systems we have put in place.”

One of the areas in which Kelly has made the greatest difference has been winning a place for his team at the construction-planning table. “In the past, we didn't have the opportunity to make security assessments of new facilities until after construction had begun,” Plucinski says. “This limited our ability to design systems that would maximize the safety of a new school building.” Under Kelly's leadership, the security department is now involved in the review of architectural plans and makes recommendations that minimize each new building's exposure to danger before any concrete is poured.

The Difference Technology Makes

In conjunction with his efforts to secure funds and cooperation, Kelly and his team continuously investigate new technologies that will make the best use of their personnel and budgetary resources. “Non-instructional personnel are hard to come by,” Plucinski explains, “so we are always looking at technology that will make better use of our existing staff.” To assist in the process of evaluating new technology and how it can be applied to the district's security challenges, Kelly and Plucinski work closely with Virginia-based ISR Solutions, a security consulting and integration firm. Says Conrad Fisher, project manager at ISR Solutions: “Ron or the chief will bring us their objectives, and we will help them identify the products and systems that will fulfill them.”

One of the ongoing budgetary drains that Kelly and his team have eliminated is re-keying costs. Various school faculty or staff will be assigned a “master” key that can open any of the doors within a particular school. “A lost key previously cost us between $10,000 and $20,000 to re-key a school,” Kelly says. The solution came in the form of an electronic access control system developed by AMAG Technology, the technology division of Group 4 Falck. The AMAG access control system, using HID proximity cards instead of keys, enables the security department to grant staff members variable access to school facilities. If a person loses their card, they are simply issued a new one, while the access privileges associated with their lost card are deleted from the AMAG cardholder database, thus there is no need to change locks and issue new keys.

Beyond saving money, the access control system delivers enhanced security without adding headcount or disrupting the teaching environment. “The access control system functions like a transparent gatekeeper,” Plucinski says. “Just a few years ago, almost anyone could walk onto a public school campus. But all that has changed now, and access control technology helps us negotiate our access and safety priorities.”

Working closely with AMAG and ISR, the school district's security department has just completed an upgrade to the AMAG 625 Enterprise platform at the district's headquarters, where the system is centrally monitored and controlled. Technicians from the district's security department have also begun a project to equip each of the district's 170-plus facilities with access control systems. Thirty-seven schools have been completed to date, with each school using a variable number of AMAG multiNODE controller panels to talk to the HID proximity readers and electrified door hardware installed at critical entrance points. One of the panels functions as a parent to the other panels and connects over the district's wide-area network (WAN) to upload transactional data and download modifications to the AMAG cardholder database administrated at the district headquarters. Two client workstations reside at the headquarters — one is used to issue visitor badges to the high volume of traffic that flows into and out of the headquarters each day, and the other is located within the police department and handles most of the district's photo-ID badging services. The entire system, including the 37 schools currently online, controls 326 access points (including the HID proximity readers installed at each) and manages approximately 5,000 cardholders. (At this point, students are not issued access control cards.) The totals will grow substantially in the years to come as new schools come online.

The district's security technicians have developed a number of unique innovations that have added new levels of efficiency. One is the installation of voltage surge protectors at critical points within the system's wiring at each facility. “It seems like we live in the lightning capital of the world,” Plucinski says. “It used to be that we had controller panels getting fried every time we have a storm — sometimes as many as one each week at $1,000 or more each time we replaced a panel.” Since they began installing the surge protectors in 1996, they have not had to replace a single controller panel.

Another innovation relates to providing after-hours access to faculty and staff. The typical solution would be to install a telephone outside the main door(s) with a direct line to a central dispatch station. The problem with that arrangement is that anyone can pick up the phone and call the dispatch center, which must then try to authenticate the person's identity. To solve this problem, Plucinski has replaced the telephone with an HID reader and intercom. When a faculty or staff member wants access, they present their card to the proximity reader, which triggers the intercom to dial the dispatch center. This ensures that only valid cardholders can submit their requests for access, eliminating any erroneous calls and the possible malicious intentions that motivate them.

Another critical component of the school district's security system is video surveillance. The security department is in the process of retrofitting existing facilities and equipping new ones with cameras and digital-video recorders from Panasonic Security Systems, Secaucus, N.J. Schools outfitted with video surveillance capabilities will typically have between 15 and 30 cameras per campus, depending on the layout of the facility. At the district's elementary schools, where delinquency is less of a problem than at the middle and high schools, the responsibility of monitoring the cameras is an ancillary function of the school's clerical staff. Web-based monitoring through a browser interface is provided to elementary school principals and police staff. In middle- and high-school situations, the administration will rotate daily monitoring responsibilities to faculty or staff members — usually those unable to perform their normal responsibilities due to mild sickness or injury. This ensures adequate surveillance without needing to add anyone to the payroll. All of the cameras can be monitored over the WAN at the district headquarters.

The difference vision makes

In spite of the accomplishments of his department, Kelly maintains a forward-looking perspective in discovering new ways to make the district and its students safer and more confident in the security of their surroundings. To ensure that the investments he is making today will enable him to take advantage of the technology advances of tomorrow, Kelly demands that any electronic security system his department acquires uses industry-standard, non-proprietary components. The selection of the AMAG access control system is one good example of this commitment. “We are not only looking at the AMAG system to provide security but also a platform we can build on,” Kelly says.

Some examples of Kelly's access control integration plans that the AMAG 625 Enterprise system can support include:

• biometric readers in the classroom to automate taking attendance;

• biometric readers on school buses to better track students while in the care of the schools;

• smart cards for cafeteria or vending purchases and library transactions;

• time and attendance capabilities to staff payroll; and

• classroom intercom and panic buttons for teachers.

One advantage to this kind of inter-departmental integration is that the departments can pool their budgets to acquire systems they would not individually be able to afford. “The more areas a piece of technology can address, the more attractive and affordable it is,” Kelly says. He also hopes that the discoveries and solutions he and his team had made will benefit his peers in school districts nationwide. “All schools have the same issues,” Kelly continues. “Our hope is that districts that may not have the financial resources we do will be able to take what we have learned and apply it in their particular situations.”

For the Record

ABOUT THE COMPANY

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

AMAG Technology	9
HID Corp.	10
ISR Solutions	11
Panasonic Security Systems	12

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