By Dave Fidlin
Correspondent
With school safety in mind, leaders in the Burlington Area School District are in the process of inking a memorandum of understanding with the Burlington Police Department that will give law enforcement access to camera systems.
Chris Weins, director of pupil services, recently announced the forthcoming MOU, which he said is designed to harness the immediacy and convenience of technology as a tool to work with police as needs arise within district.
“We’ve been engaging with Burlington PD around the use of our camera system during a critical emergency situation,” Weins said at a School Board meeting on Dec. 9. “Currently, we have a limited number of staff within the district who have access to our cameras.”
BASD’s safety team routinely collaborates with local police, Weins said. The idea of granting police access to the camera system was raised during a recent round of conversations.
“We thought that made sense and was a good idea for us to engage in,” Weins said.
Legal representatives with BASD and the City of Burlington have been hammering out a MOU. The document, Weins said, will be an important tool because it will provide a framework for how the camera system will be accessed outside the district ¬– and who will have access to it.
Most of BASD’s property across the different buildings is captured on camera systems as a result of a school safety grant the district procured.
“We had a number of upgrades around that, some of it being cameras in the schools,” he said. “I couldn’t give you an exact number, in terms of percentage of cameras in the building covered, but it’s a good deal of the exterior, the parking lots and hallways within schools.”
Once all of the details are finalized, Weins said police will be able to access the cameras remotely, as opposed to having to review footage on-site.
“It would basically be an application that would be installed on their computer, which would allow them to remotely access our camera system,” Weins said. “Our platform allows us to track usage and to track when that’s accessed.”
-
-
-
-
-