School Security | News
Mississippi School District Turns to HD Megapixel Cameras for Security
A Mississippi school district has deployed a new video surveillance system with 373 high-definition megapixel IP cameras to all of its buildings to boost safety as well as help crack down on vandalism.
At the conclusion of the 2010 school year, Meridian Public School District (MPSD) began its hunt for a system that would work across campuses and could be centrally managed. It decided to go with IQeye's 2 MP Alliance domes, which were installed at the district's six elementary schools, three middle schools, and at the vocational center of its the high school.
"In this initial phase we were looking to migrate a number of different systems and old camera technologies to a single, upgraded system covering all our schools," said Tim Boutwell, district director of technology. The cameras cover bus lanes, parent pick-up lanes, school entrances and exits, administrative offices, as well as a number of campus hallways.
Two workstations on each campus enable administrators to observe activity with 22-inch monitors, and the directors of security and maintenance at the district's main office have access to monitor all 373 cameras across all 12 campuses.
Features of the IQeye Alliance domes include:
- Images up to 2 megapixels;
- A three-axis gimbal ;
- Pivoting hinged shroud;
- Power over Ethernet (PoE);
- H.264 main profile compression;
- Viewing and recording at 30 frames per second; and
- One week of video storage.
We frequently have ‘he said, she said’ incidents, and now the principal can easily and quickly go back and see exactly what happened. We also have some vandalism, and we have been able to catch the offenders based on the video images — it’s worked tremendously for that,” added Boutwell, who said the district plans to add more cameras as funding is available in the budget.
Meridian Public School District has more than 6,000 students and 1,000-plus staff members.
For more information, visit the IQeye Web site.
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Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.