Security

Overcoming Challenges Upgrading Cameras in Old and Historic School Buildings

When IT leaders are dissuaded from modernizing technologies, they need the help of CDW school safety experts.

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Bryan Krause is a K–12 Education Strategist for CDW Education. He is a former teacher, coach and district administrator with more than 30 years of experience in Colorado. He was principal of a school that suffered a school shooting and has shared his experience and learnings with numerous school districts and organizations nationally. In addition, he has led response teams in numerous school crisis situations to help in response and recovery.

Cari Warnock

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Cari Warnock is the CDW education ambassador for K-12 scale. She has more than 20 years of experience in public education and is focused on building strategy and alliances to impact work with education organizations that may differ from “traditional” districts, including regional service centers; charter, magnet, and parochial/private schools; and more.

The oldest wooden schoolhouse in the U.S. is a small building in St. Augustine, Fla., with records that date back to 1740. While this particular building is no longer used for teaching and learning, plenty of other classes across the country take place in dignified and historic structures.

Divide Public School, in Montana, was built in 1870. It is the only school in Divide School District 4, serving six students ranging from first to fifth grade. The Divide School is an example — albeit an extreme one — of what these historic school buildings often have in common: They are home to rural, private, charter and independent schools.

Whether schools are protecting six students or 6,000, technology can help them maintain physical security. Today’s camera systems are proactive. They have video analytics that identify and track potential concerns, and they back up footage to a cloud database that isn’t erased after only a few days.

Click on the banner to explore school safety solutions for your K–12 classrooms.

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Outdated systems, on the other hand, are reactive, forcing IT professionals or first responders to manually sift through hours of low-quality video to identify an individual or investigate an incident.

Too often, historic school buildings have security systems that are 20 years old or older. They have none of the capabilities of newer systems, and thanks to the often fragile infrastructure and red tape associated with historic buildings, they can be difficult to upgrade.

Getting New Security Technologies into Old School Buildings

Replacing an old security system is easier than installing one from scratch because the old system likely already has a conduit path for the new tech. This makes it easier to connect modern cameras to networking and power supplies.

Adding cameras and conduit paths to an old schoolhouse that has none proves more challenging. Not only do those paths need to be installed, but there are often strict parameters around maintaining the aesthetic of a historic building. This sometimes means IT teams can’t run visible cabling through a building and need to find a way to incorporate or hide various wires.

For schools feeling stymied by historical building regulations and dated architecture, working with a partner can help IT and facilities maintenance teams create a plan for physical safety upgrades. CDW’s experts have experience working in old buildings; they once dealt with a structure built on a foundation of logs, making it nearly impossible to bury cables.

MORE ON EDTECH: Find the funding for physical safety upgrades in K–12 schools.

Keeping Rapidly Growing Schools Connected

There are also challenges, particularly for small and independent schools, related to rapid expansion. When schools outgrow their building, they’re sometimes left scrambling for space. In these instances, temporary buildings tend to pop up on school grounds, but getting security tech and connectivity to these spaces may prove difficult, depending on their location.

This is where planning plays a role. Ensuring IT admins are involved in planning conversations can save K–12 leaders and educators from headaches down the road. Wireless and cloud-based technologies are key in these spaces, but schools can also consider trenching to run underground cables when leveling and grading for these buildings.

WATCH NOW: A Wi-Fi upgrade helped K–12 students build skills for life.

Alleviating the Community’s Concerns About New Tech

Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to a technology upgrade in a small or rural school isn’t the building infrastructure, but the outlook of community members.

Transparency and communication are crucial for K–12 school leadership in these cases, as it can help address pushback from families who are hesitant to change traditions in their small school. They may cite religious, political and family heritage beliefs to oppose the addition of new technologies, or they may simply not understand the need.

As an added challenge, small schools often lack on-staff expertise to address these issues in the building and with the community. Again, this is where a partner can help, by assuaging fears and bringing an expert’s perspective to the table. CDW thought leadership, guidance over time and school safety summits can help concerned community members understand the importance of tech upgrades, especially when it pertains to student safety.

This article is part of the ConnectIT: Bridging the Gap Between Education and Technology series.