Indiana District Secures Doors, Reduces Key Hassles with Wireless Locks

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 08/15/16

An Indiana school system has replaced the door locks through all of its buildings with locks that can be managed through the district's wireless network. Paoli Community School Corporation worked with NAPCO's Alarm Lock division to install the company's AlarmLock Trilogy locks.

According to Superintendent Casey Brewster, the new locks now protect all of the buildings on its single-site campus.

Brewster said the locks work with a proximity card, fob or other proximity devices, adding that the district has the technology available to embed proximity devices into "common school items such as mobile devices, laptop computers, computer cases, etc." for less than $2 each. With that capability, he said, "tasks such as tracking and submitting class attendance can be completed automatically and in real-time."

He noted that because the locks are connected through the school system's wireless infrastructure via gateways, each lock can be "independently disabled locally or from off-site if needed," thereby preventing "any proximity device, card or fob from unlocking a door as well."

In addition, Brewster pointed out, the "reliable and secure nature of the locks" enables his district to "eliminate the additional costs of cutting new metal keys, tracking the metal keys, changing out lock cores when keys are lost or otherwise not unaccounted for, and providing or revoking access to school staff at any time for any door or area. The time savings for our maintenance staff is incredible."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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