Be careful; cameras are watching on the campuses

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

Big Brother is watching as drivers guide their vehicles into parking spaces at any Joshua ISD campus. He’s watching to ensure their protection and that of everyone else.

“The parking lot camera is going to see your car,” said Assistant Superintendent John Grigsby. “The camera sees you walk to the front door. You open that, and to get in the second set of doors, there’s a different security level. You have to buzz to request admittance to the office. From the double doors to the office, there’s a camera. The office will give you a pass. As you leave the office to go to a classroom or the library, there’s another camera in the hall.

“The cameras are on a three-day spool. That gets us through the weekend in case somebody breaks into the school.”

That’s about all Joshua ISD wants known about its security. If people knew much more, administrators believe, the system might not be so secure.

“What we want the general public to know is what the system can do and that it’s in place,” Grigsby said. “We don’t mind them knowing it’s activated. We just don’t want them accessing it. It’s very comprehensive.”

Known as Rapid Responder, the hardware is the property of a company called Prepared Response, which specializes in emergency management.

Joshua ISD applied for and received a REMS grant of some $350,000 from the Department of Education in 2007.

“Prepared Response is a business that started after Columbine,” Grigsby said. Columbine High School was the scene of a shooting rampage in 1999.

“Prepared Response helped us create this online system for emergency management, first responders and administrators,” he said. “They showed us what was available and what we could do with it. The grant started in September of 2007. We started in February of 2008 because of a delay in the bidding process. We got it online in September of 2008. We had it for the entire 2008-09 school year.”

The system is labor intensive. Data updates are frequent, and personnel training is constant.

“As soon as you get it set up and running, it has to be updated,” Grigsby said. “Floor plans may be out of date. We have to add the football stadium and new middle school to the facilities. And we have to retrain because personnel changes. The more we get into it, the more we have to do.”

Rapid Responder does virtually everything.

“Any of our first responders such as police, fire and ambulance have access to the system if they have an Internet connection,” Grigsby said. “Take Staples Elementary School, for instance. The first thing that comes on the screen is a map that shows where Staples is located in the city. As you go to the school, the screen shows where the monitors are located and how many surveillance cameras there are.

“There is a description of the site, such as the playground. You can go to different categories on the screen. It tells what the hazards are, such as railroad tracks. There are aerial photos. If police wanted to see if they could land a helicopter on the roof, they could view the roof.”

School rooftops are not labeled to show what lies beneath, in the actual building.

“We’re going to be doing that,” Grigsby said. “We will be painting labels such as ‘300 Hall’ and ‘400 Hall.’ Another thing we want to go back and do is label the pictures of the buildings. What is that building with the white roof? That’s the administration building.”

It’s significant for first responders to be able to identify utility and emergency features.

“The map shows where the transformer is, where the gas lines are, where the fire extinguishers are,” Grigsby said. “It shows the location of the power, gas and water shutoffs.

“If we want to route traffic in an evacuation, where do we take the kids from north and south loading zones? If there is a chemical release, what do we do?”

Whatever is done, the cameras are watching.

“Let’s say a police officer pulls up to a campus in his car. If he has Internet in the car, he can access that campus,” Grigsby said. “He can look through any of the cameras and get a live feed. That’s pretty handy for first responders to have if they’re looking for an adult wandering the halls. They can go to different hallway cameras to find the person. The high school will have twice as many cameras as the middle school. All the halls, entrances and exits have cameras. All the elementaries have had cameras for at least a year, some for several years. The high school and middle school have had them for several years.”

The police officer with a computer and no Internet is not out of luck.

“All you have to do is take this [device], plug it into the computer, and you can access everything at the campus except the live feed,” Grigsby said.

No system is without faults. The Rapid Responder isn’t in all school systems for concrete reasons.

“It’s expensive and time-consuming,” Grigsby said. “One of the biggest problems is updating it. You don’t just sit down and do it in 30 minutes. And with turnover in personnel, you always need to retrain.”

But it does work.

It will even spot a coyote on the Caddo Grove Elementary playground.

“If that coyote comes close enough,” Grigsby said.

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