The West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education is preparing for a door-video security system to be placed at each of the district’s schools. At its October 28 meeting the board authorized the submission of project documents for state grants for the system.##M:[more]##
The applications will be submitted for a “regularly operating district grant” to the state Department of Education for the cameras at Dutch Neck, Maurice Hawk, Town Center, and J.V.B. Wicoff elementary schools; at Village, Millstone River, Community Middle, and Grover Middle schools; and at High Schools North and South.
According to Larry Shanok, the assistant superintendent of finance, the board had originally received approval for the monitoring project from the state Schools Development Authority, which later ran out of money and stopped offering grants for such projects.
However, the state recently announced that it would again be offering some money, and that the first grant application period ends on Thursday, November 20. The only drawback is that a district cannot apply for a project that has already been approved by the state, nor can it put in for projects that have not yet been awarded. So district officials will be asking the state to rescind the prior approval for the project so it can submit a new application.
Thomas Smith, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said the project involves placing cameras on the exterior of every school building, and using the cameras as part of a monitoring and recording system. The system would have a back up of several weeks of video, containing images of people who come in and out of the schools.
“The biggest thing is about controlling access to our buildings, and this would allow us to do that district-wide,” said Smith. While the district has already started the project — there are cameras located already at Millstone River school and High School South — Smith said the goal is to have consistency. “We want to put it in as one system district-wide that would be web-based that we can really provide a higher level of control in our system and monitoring of the outside.”
