Brunswick County Schools hopes to move forward with security upgrades

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, N.C. (WECT) - New technology could mean a safer school for students, and Brunswick County Schools is looking to spend thousands to ensure student safety with new security cameras.

The Brunswick County Board of Education is looking to spend $763,505.26 on new system upgrades to the current closed circuit television (CCVT) cameras.

County commissioners will have the option to approve the application at the next meeting. Currently, the Center of Applied Sciences and Technology (COAST) school is using the upgraded technology.

The school was picked for a pilot program in November. School officials now want to implement the technology in the rest of the schools.

“The picture quality is going to be the biggest thing for us making sure that we have good clear footage of anything that could happen in the building,” said Steven Barger a member of the Brunswick County Board of Education.

He says the board supports any upgrade that will keep students safe. The new systems will allow video to be stored and viewed quickly if needed, higher quality zoom and send alerts to school resource officers and administrators.

“The picture quality is going to be the biggest thing for us making sure that we have good clear footage of anything that could happen in the building. One of the concerns I’ve heard from the community is the assumption that facial recognition software is being utilized. I can tell you, that’s a program that could be added to this later. But we don’t see that as being a need right now. And we are not using any of the facial recognition software that I’ve heard about the community,” said Barger.

The Brunswick County Safety Team says the plans will convert the current CCTV system to a program called Milestone. The project will be done in two phases, one phase focusing on systems and servers and another focusing on new cameras.

The project will use the vendor called A3 Communications, costing $450,473.12 and Cambridge Computer Services, Inc. costing $313,032.14.

Debra Bair the director of technology says the new upgrades are not cheap but it’s important to keep up with changing times.

“It’s about the safety of the children. And as long as I’ve been doing this job, when you multiply anything times 20 schools, it’s very easy to get close to numbers like that. So it adds up quickly.” She says the new upgrades will allow school employees to look up information faster.

“It will allow me to go in and within a very, very short period of time be able to select cameras and say show me within this timeframe. Everybody wearing a red shirt,” said Bair.

The upgrades can also potentially save the county money by creating less of a need for certain positions.

“Security upgrades are just part of the whole package that we are implementing across the district for security upgrades. Our partnership with the sheriff’s office is a big part of that as well as all the SROs we have and then utilizing technology in place of having to pay another position potentially, to make sure we’re keeping our schools safe and our campuses safe for all of our students and our visitors,” said Barger.

" Safety is of utmost importance to all of us, we want to make sure that if there’s something happens in our school, we can utilize the security footage properly to make sure we are getting a good outcome in the end.”