On Location

Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM

Between 2000 and 2001, the Spring ISD (Independent School District) Child Nutrition Department in Texas installed cameras and VCRs into half of the elementary school cafeterias to record money transactions and to oversee workers. Having some success in catching petty theft and verifying workman's compensation issues, they thought it was the end of their problems.

But it wasn't long before Melanie Konarik, director of the Spring ISD Child Nutrition Department, realized that there were “strong issues” in using VCRs.

“The documentation showed that an employee who had recently returned from a workman's compensation leave was lifting heavy objects, which she wasn't supposed to do. But we spent too much time looking through old videos to find the evidence,” Konarik says.

Konarik says that staff sometimes forgot to put the video in or to rewind the tapes. And, if the power went out, the VCR date and time stamp were incorrect.

“We had a certain incident that we needed to view and the manager had forgotten to press record after she inserted the videotape,” Konarik says. “Often, the video stopped before the end of the day, usually during cleanup, when accidents are more likely to happen.”

Konarik visited the Spring ISD Police Department and asked Police Chief Alan Bragg for advice. He recommended a DMVR recording system from Dedicated Micros, Chantilly, Va.

ICTX (Interfacing Company of Texas), The Woodlands, Texas, had a contract with the district to install the first DVMRs, and all the wiring for points of sale when they first started the installations, says Barbara Colwell, coordinator of operations for the Child Nutrition Department.

“The child nutrition director provides her own system and we install it for her,” says Matt Smith, project manager for ICTX. “We install everything from the cable, cameras and monitors to the DVMRs.”

The department has since hired a computer technician to handle installations and maintenance, and to work the cameras, which are locked so that neither employees nor students can reposition them. ICTX still runs the fiber, Ethernet and coax RG59 cabling from the network drop to the computers in the offices.

The Dedicated Micros units were installed last year in all of the secondary schools, and the department is replacing the VCRs in the elementary schools as well.

Colwell says the number of cameras they use depends on the location. “We use 6 to 11 cameras in small elementary schools, 14 to 24 in a middle school (depending on the size of the school and staff), and 30-32 in high schools.”

While the Spring ISD Police Department does not monitor the kitchens, they do help the kitchen managers retrieve and print the images when necessary.

“We pulled up images from one of their DVMRs, saved them to file and printed out still shots to identify seven kids who jumped another kid,” Chief Bragg says.

Konarik has terminated some staff using the digital images that showed they were not following policy, or that they were stealing money or food.

Konarik says the system pays for itself every year when she has a workman's compensation claim; and because kitchen managers can log on and record the exchange of money, the department increased its revenue from food sales in the first year.

The system has also proven to be a good management tool.

“One supervisor had a meeting in my office,” Konarik says. “She saw that the heavy rubber mats hadn't been put down yet at one of her 10 schools, so she just called to remind the manager that they weren't put down.”

Twenty-four schools now have the Dedicated Micros units, and the department has placed an order for an additional 15 Digital Sprite 2s with 320GB internal storage. They are in the process of networking them all, so that they can use the Dedicated Micros Network Viewer to monitor all of the cafeterias.

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