Security cameras have historically been used for safety purposes, catching incidents to prevent misinformation from spreading. These situations aren’t unfamiliar to the administration of a public school, and cameras are often checked to ensure the security of the staff and students.
Head principal of Fremont High School (FHS), Myron Sikora, helps aid his team in monitoring the school and keeping things in line; it isn’t a solo job.
“I would say maybe the administration uses the cameras a little bit more than I do, but I assist however I can. Sometimes it’s a matter of one person working on one piece of the situation, and another person checking the cameras, like reaching out to parents, for example,” Sikora said. “Or one person is talking with the teacher, and then another is looking on the cameras to see what we can see. Those kinds of things.”
As with all safety measures, protocols are put in place for situations. Fire drills, tornado drills, lockouts, and lock-ins are all part of school safety procedures. It’s no different when an incident happens within the school walls. Cameras are checked often and thoroughly, though there are certain limitations that the school has to work around.
“One of the things that we have to be careful of with the camera system is FERPA, which is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” Sikora said, “So, video [footage] is considered an educational record, and so we have to treat that just like any other student records with regard to showing it to other people if they don’t have the need to see it.”
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a law which has been protecting the educational records of students since 1974. While this law is important, it does add a few hoops for the administration to jump through.
While the law makes it harder for administrators to work through situations, the surplus in cameras around the school in recent years has helped extensively.
“There were cameras at the high school, but they needed serious updating. Cliff Huss was able to get funding for FHS,” District Security Coordinator Kevin Kavan said.
The upgrades at FHS were part of a broader district-wide effort to improve school security. Kavan explained how he helped bring the elementary schools up to the same standard. “I was able to get funding through the School Violence Prevention Program Grant for new cameras at Bell Field, Grant, JCAC, Linden and Milliken Park,” Kavan said.
The funding allowed FHS to modernize its camera system and expand its capabilities.
“We have a lot more of them now than we ever have before,” Sikora said. “The technology is a different software altogether. We also have a tracking system that’s part of the software which allows you to go from camera to camera to camera, versus stopping and moving to a different camera. It allows you to just keep things flowing from camera to camera. So, that’s something that we never had before, and our current software allows that, and it’s very helpful.”
Cross-camera tracking isn’t new technology by any means, but the addition of it to the cameras in FHS has aided staff tremendously. Cross-camera tracking can shorten investigations by days, creating a continuous trail that follows the subject across multiple cameras.
With updated technology and clearer investigative tools, Fremont High School’s administration continues working behind the scenes to ensure incidents are handled efficiently and responsibly.
