New Thomas Jefferson High School to be outfitted with hundreds of security cameras

As the opening of the new Thomas Jefferson High School nears, district leaders are outfitting the building with security features, including hundreds of cameras and video archiving equipment.

School board members on March 26 approved a $365,841 proposal from Security101 to purchase a video surveillance and access control security system.

In a second vote, the board approved a $141,410 proposal from Security101 for the purchase of high school video surveillance perimeter and roadway cameras.

“The building is enormous. We’re talking 300,000 square feet of video surveillance coverage. It’s quite a big investment, but it’s also quite a large building,” said Ryan Snodgrass, director of facilities.

In addition to cameras, the purchases include additional archiving servers and mobile capabilities that will allow administrators and school police to review cameras and unlock doors from a remote location through software, Snodgrass said. Those features will be available throughout the entire district.

Also, instead of having keys to the building, teachers and administrators now will use badges that grant and track access.

Cost of the equipment was included in the initial $95 million budget for the new high school.

“The fact that we were able to design our security system for a brand new building, we didn’t have to retrofit anything,” said Scott Milburn, assistant to the superintendent of secondary education.