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Category: Cameras

A Disjointed Approach to School Safety

It is necessary that schools take a comprehensive and cohesive approach to ensuring the safety of their students and staff. If school safety procedures and protocols are inconsistent or unclear, it can lead to uncertainty and insecurity, negatively impacting the learning environment. A disjointed approach can undermine the trust and confidence that students, faculty,  staff, and parents have in a school’s ability to keep them safe. 

It is easy to see how confusion can ensue when the elements of school safety planning are all housed in different apps, software, or physical locations. For example, elements of school safety planning and where they are often housed can look like this:

In addition to the locations of these elements, it is important to consider how easily accessible these elements are for all relevant personnel. An integrated school safety management system that combines all the elements of school safety, such as emergency response plans, threat assessments, and incident reporting, into a single, ready-to-use platform can reduce fragmentation and increase access to information for those who need it. Utilizing such systems makes it easier to reduce confusion and increase the effectiveness of such measures. 

Additionally, schools should prioritize communication and collaboration among all members involved in school safety. This includes regular training sessions, drills, and meetings with local emergency response agencies to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working together to keep the school and community safe. Here are 5 steps that schools can take to address the issue:

  1. Conduct a thorough assessment of the current safety measures: Schools should evaluate their existing safety procedures and identify any gaps or inconsistencies that need to be addressed. This assessment should involve input from all stakeholders to ensure that a variety of perspectives are being taken into account. 
  2. Develop a comprehensive safety plan: Based on the assessment, schools should develop a comprehensive safety plan that outlines specific steps to address any gaps or weaknesses in their current approach. The plan should include clear protocols for responding to emergencies, as well as strategies for preventing incidents from occurring in the first place. 
  3. Provide training and education: Schools should provide training and education to all staff and students to ensure they understand the safety protocols and know how to respond in an emergency. This training should be ongoing and regularly updated to ensure everyone is prepared. nSide Training focuses on using the nSide Platform, as well as school safety best practices such as drills, tabletop exercises, threat assessments, and assemblies. 
  4. Utilize technology: Technology can be a valuable tool in enhancing school safety. Schools can use security cameras, 360-mapping, fleet tracking, access management, and more to monitor the school environment and identify potential threats. Integrating the nSide Suite of Products into your existing emergency management systems can help put you on the right path toward keeping your schools safe. 
  5. Foster a culture of safety: Districts should work to foster a culture of safety that encourages all members of the community to be vigilant and proactive when it comes to safeguarding our schools. This can be achieved through regular communication and outreach to students, staff, and parents, as well as through the establishment of relationships with local first responders and emergency management organizations.

It is essential that schools take a holistic approach to school safety, bringing together all the necessary elements in a coordinated and accessible manner. By conducting a thorough assessment, developing a comprehensive safety plan, providing training and education, utilizing technology, and fostering a culture of safety, schools can create a safer and more secure environment for their students, staff, and community. 

nSide, Inc.™ is proud to offer a platform to house your school’s safety plans. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with all we have to offer to help keep schools safe.

Email us at help@nside.io so that we can help you build the best safety plan for your school!

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April 19, 2023
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Why Interior Mapping of Your School is Critical for Safety

Interior Mapping – What is it?

If you’re familiar with Google Street View, then the concept of a 360 degree map is not foreign. From anywhere in the world, users can travel down the streets of any city, and look in any direction. But did you know the same technology is also available for the inside of buildings? Now your entire campus can be mapped in a 360 degree view. 

This video gives a demonstration of how essential interior mapping can be in an emergency situation.

By collecting 360-degree photographs in hallways and rooms, these images can be linked together to create a virtual tour of the building. This allows you to navigate through buildings within nSide – The School Safety Platform. When your organization and local first responders have access to this data, it equips your team with situational awareness for emergency planning, training, response, and recovery efforts.

This can help save lives in the following ways:

  1. Assets are catalogued for insurance purposes
  2. The campus is mapped to aid in recovery efforts after a storm or destruction of the building
  3. First responders have access to the map of the school to avoid potential threats to themselves
  4. Dispatchers can help guide those involved in rescue efforts to get where they need to be faster, even in the dark

If you already have the nSide School Safety platform, it’s easy to upgrade your standard map to nSide |View. Having that visibility into your school buildings can mean the difference between critical seconds when an emergency happens.

Call us today to get started!

1800.604.1822

August 24, 2021
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Six Things your Alabama School can do with their CARES Act funding

The recent passage of the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act is something that brought many American households hope and tangible financial assistance. However, as with many similar bills, the verbiage can feel complex, and many people may not realize that the act offers additional help in other sectors. When it comes to school safety, we always get excited over anything that helps schools update or improve their security, but we REALLY love the benefits of the CARES act: over $899 million dollars in funding for technology upgrades! What does this mean for you and your school? Only the best news ever! You can now receive nSide products AT NO COST because of this funding and its implications. 

In accordance with the guidelines laid out by the CARES Act, our products and services meet the criteria, such as developing procedures to improve response efforts of local agencies, facility upgrades, repairs or improvements that can support student’s health needs, and purchasing educational technology. To get started, claim your funding HERE, then read on to find six things you can do with this important money:

Start planning ahead with the nSide Base Platform.

  1. This is our signature product, and it works in tandem with all our other products to enhance your emergency planning and communication. It includes components like mapping and 360 degree views of your campus, creating and storing your emergency plans, help with compliance for state and local guidelines, and training for your school community (staff, students, and educators) in protocols and procedures. 
nSide Base Platform

Be more prepared with nSide|View.

nSide|View is like a digital blueprint of your school. It links images and photographs together to create a virtual walk-through of the structures, and provides first responders with accurate and detailed exits, entrances, and anything else they’d need to know. It also helps you base emergency decisions on more than old paper maps of your school’s rooms, hallways, and more. 

nSide | VIEW

Gain extra insight with nSide|Live.

Ever wished that you had an extra set of eyes (or two)? That’s what you will gain when you use the nSide|Live platform: extra viewing abilities to help in an emergency, to help protect students from bullying, drugs, and crime, and a secure way to view happenings on campus. Best of all, this data can be provided to first responders in an instant, giving them potentially life-saving information rapidly and in real-time. 

nSide | Live

Monitor your school bus systems with nSide|Fleet.

This comprehensive way to keep track of your students and drivers keeps them safe and allows emergency personnel to reach them in the event of a crisis. You can also view reports that show fuel levels, maintenance issues, and geofencing to ensure the utmost safety for the children under your care. 

nSide | Fleet

Close off your campus with one-touch with nSide|Edge.

This amazing piece of technology gives the ability to lock down the campus doors with just one click. This is effective in the event of active shootings, or any instance where an immediate lockdown would be needed. You can also schedule when doors are locked to coordinate traffic flow through your building. Be assured that the ability is completely secure, so only authorized personnel would be able to initiate the lockdown procedures! 

nSide | EDGE

Reach the most critical audience with nSide|Notify.

When you need to reach parents, students, or staff in a hurry, you will want a quick, cohesive way to do so in a professional way, and nSide|Notify is the answer. It uses the existing communication standards at the school, and integrates them to decrease lag time in an emergency and allow mass communication in a smooth manner. It saves you time when moments matter!

This funding can make a huge impact on your school, and the process to receive it is simple and straightforward. If you’re unsure if you can integrate or install our products or services, we would love to connect you with our team members. They can walk you through the steps to decide which products meet the guidelines for your specific campus, and how to get started! 

May 6, 2021
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How Camera Systems Can Improve School Safety

How safe is my child’s school?

This is an unsettling question that many parents have found themselves asking more frequently over the last twenty years. It’s not a comfortable topic, but after the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, school safety was thrust into the spotlight. Today, gun violence, bullying, and other related issues are paramount in the public school sector, and can leave parents and educators wondering how school safety can be improved or enhanced. It’s one of the things that we here at nSide have set out to do: build confidence in the school systems, so they are well-equipped to handle anything that comes their way. 

Are schools truly unsafe?

There are many issues facing school administrations today. Depending on the region in which a K-12 school is located, some of these include: 

  • Bullying and Cyberbullying
  • Gun violence
  • Student and Teacher Mental Health
  • Natural Disasters (such as hurricanes or tornadoes)
  • Threat Assessment and School Climate (the emotional environment of a school)
  • Recovery from a disaster or crisis (dealing with the aftermath

Each year, there are multiple resources and studies done to assess the safety of elementary and upper level schools, including the School Survey on Crime and Safety. This comprehensive study is comprised of 4,800 randomly selected schools, and provides estimates of school crime, incidents, disciplinary issues, and covers crime prevention and school security as topics. The very latest version, which occurred in 2019, showed some of the following data (Source: SSOCS)

  • From the period of July 1, 2016-June 30, 2017, there were 42 fatalities that were school-related. These include students, staff and school personnel. 
  • In 2018, there were 836,100 violent victimization crimes (theft and non fatal violence) that occurred among students who are 12-18 years old. 
  • From 2018-2019, there were 66 reported school shootings. These include 29 shootings that had casualties, and 27 that had injuries reported. 
  • In 2016, twenty five percent of the reporting fifth graders were at schools where physical conflicts were occurring between classmates at a minimum of once per month. These same fifth graders had lower reading, science, and math scores than the percentage who did not have physical conflict at their school. 

Although these are certainly alarming trends, national data concludes that between 1992 and 2017, crime and violence are actually on a downward trend. This can be confusing, because the amount of school shootings is disproportionately higher, and can feel emotionally difficult for parents and educators. Of course, no level of violence in the school environment would be considered appropriate, but there are many factors which have led to a reduction in non-violent and violent crimes alike, and one of these is the addition of security personnel and cameras (Source). 

How Cameras Can Keep Schools Safer

 After 1999 (which was the year when the Columbine shooting occurred), the number of schools that reported using some type of security camera increased, rising from just 19% to 83% in 2018.  In August 2020, a joint effort from the Department of Justice and the Office of Community Oriented Policing suggested ten things that schools can do to improve their safety, and they listed campus and classroom security as third highest priority. The highest priority item was comprehensive school safety assessments, which we will discuss later. 

  1. Video camera monitoring can minimize students using or selling drugs on campus, and can deter theft. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (Source) suggests that installing cameras in locations such as parking lots can capture student interactions, or mitigate drug-related behaviors from high-risk students. As far as thefts, cameras have been shown to deter would-be burglars from things like locker thefts or parking lot thefts (student or staff vehicles). This applies to cameras that are installed with accompanying signs announcing their presence. 
  2. Video cameras in schools have also been shown to reduce bullying, which is a high concern for many parents and educators, and can lend itself to a feeling of instability for students. In some cases, installed cameras on school campuses reduced recorded instances of bullying up to 70%. The National Center for Education Statistics found that students were fearful of certain places on their campuses which did NOT have cameras or adequate camera surveillance, such as outside on school grounds. They also found that students avoided these areas out of fear of being targeted. 
  3. Video cameras can monitor and help identify shooters on a school campus. Surveillance cameras can be very useful to law enforcement when there are intruders or shooters, and capture vandalism and other non-violent offenses. It can also lower the liability for educators and schools, as their positive actions during a crisis are viewable.  

Why Schools May be Reluctant to Install Cameras

With any new advance in technology, there can be hindrances of many types, but the top three reasons that schools may be hesitant would be: concerns about student and teacher privacy, the cost of such a service, and making students or teachers feel suspicious about one another. We understand these are genuine concerns, and specifically want to address the issue of privacy. Our unique systems are made up of live monitoring systems that are only accessible to those who need to view it, such as law enforcement or other safety personnel. And in regards to cost, our technology  can use your existing cameras (if you have them) and integrates them into our system. If you do need new cameras, we can help guide you to the solution that suits your budget and needs. Lastly, the trust of students and staff has been shown to be highest in schools where the “school climate” is one of safety and security. This works hand in hand with your security plan and installation, fostering an overall environment of trust. 

How nSide | Live Works

First, our qualified team will assess your current needs. This is relevant to the findings we mentioned above, which include making a comprehensive safety assessment and plan for your place of education. We will help you decide if you need new equipment, and make sure your current installations are working and in good order. Then, we will make sure your team is trained in using our systems, called nSide|Live. It’s live-time monitoring of your existing (or new, if you need them installed) cameras, and it can be viewed by high level administrators (school safety directors or principals with access) even from afar, and is safe and secure. You won’t need to worry about any unwanted visitors hacking into your secure systems and spying on teachers or students. 

In the event of an emergency, you will be able to grant access to first responders and emergency workers. This will get aid to your students, or help you intervene with an emergency situation, immediately. As an administration, you will be able to control who has access and when. Our system is different, because of the ability to grant and revoke access that is needed, based on the situation at hand. Many systems make it much more complicated, and leave their camera systems open to security gaps. No matter what your security camera needs are, we can assist you!

Safety Benefits Everyone

The findings from the most recent SSOCS report continued to affirm that the safer that students feel, the better they are able to focus and meet academic standards. Both students and the staff benefit from safety improvements such as installing cameras, and the long-term benefits of students who are successful in school stretch into the community. Without these safety standards implemented, students not only experience violence, they can also witness violence (which has lasting emotional and psychological effects). With a comprehensive safety plan, curating a secure and stable environment is possible and can help students and staff thrive in their roles. 

If your school is ready to take the next step, and assess the systems already in place, please let us know. We would love to sit down with you, address any security gaps, and help you move forward with a concrete plan to keep you, your students, and your staff members safer than ever. 

Sources: 

April 16, 2021
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