School Surveillance on a High School Budget

There were few if any surveillance cameras in the high school when Jason Jones graduated from Wyoming Area 17 years ago. Today, the district is in the final stage of installing 63 cameras hooked up to a complete surveillance system that Jones designed, one that filled the district’s need for monitoring without emptying taxpayers’ wallets.

It’s an accomplishment in which he takes great pride, especially since it was for his alma mater.

“I love this school and the fact that we couldn’t see some incidents bothered me,” Jones said when he pitched the new surveillance system to the school board in August. With the new system, there are more than twice as many cameras capturing images with better resolution, and the images can be reviewed 16 at a time on one computer screen or on wireless devices carried by district personnel. Jones and district administrators can even sign on to the system from outside the school and see what is going on inside, he said.

All the equipment was carefully chosen by Jones to provide the most bang for the buck. He recalled reviewing initial specifications and an early project estimate when he first joined the district almost two years ago. “My first thought was I could put a smart board in every classroom for that estimate,” Jones said. He said while surveillance systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, he knew he could come up with a plan that would protect the school for much less than that.