Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Traverse City Schools Ensure Student and Staff Safety

  • 12/01/13

The Traverse City Area Public School District (TCAPS) covers 300 square miles over three counties in Michigan, with thousands of students, teachers and staff.

The increased need to protect them and the valuable public property of its 26 buildings prompted a custom security system to monitor all school activity from a central hub, integrating all security systems into one easy-to-use yet effective platform.

“We worked with multiple solutions over the years, each with pros and cons,” stated Paul Mahon, Director of Construction and Maintenance for TCAPS. “Installing one district-wide solution that supports our multiple levels of security ensures the safety of our students and staff — the number one priority.”

Milestone XProtect Corporate software allows authorized staff to monitor for safety, security and disciplinary actions at any time.

It is a full-scale, federated security solution that includes video streaming, alarm management, integrated access control via card access systems, emergency panic lockdowns, video synchronization and control of each system centrally.

TCAPS was a large-scale design that involved 26 unique structures for a vast amount of engineering: different wiring, ceiling setups and monitoring station locations with the centralized video surveillance integration.

XProtect was implemented quickly and efficiently, minimizing interruption for the administrators who monitor hundreds of cameras from Panasonic and Arecont Vision.

Throughout the district, 19 monitoring stations were established with HP video workstations, HP ProLiant video servers and HP StorageWorks for powerful storage capacity — important for so much video data.

Milestone XProtect Corporate supports an unlimited number of cameras, users and sites, making it the perfect match for TCAPS’ plans for additional cameras.

Since the security upgrade, there have been instances where school property was reported missing, and those trained to use the system monitored and reviewed the recorded events.

The evidence was quickly and easily exported from the Milestone system and provided to the local police with a built-in viewer. “XProtect is really well put together, powerful software that meets our complicated needs,” concludes Mahon.

Milestone Systems
www.milestonesys.com

This article originally appeared in the School Planning & Management December 2013 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • Zurn Elkay Releases 2025 Sustainability Report

    Zurn Elkay Water Solutions recently announced the release of its annual sustainability report, according to a news release. The 2025 report discusses the organization’s efforts to maintain good environmental stewardship and the solutions provided in helping customers meet sustainability goals.

  • Illinois State University Breaks Ground on College of Fine Arts Transformation

    Illinois State University in Normal, Ill., recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts transformation project, according to university news. The series of new constructions and renovations will upgrade spaces in Centennial East, the Center for the Visual Arts, and the Center for the Performing Arts, as well as replace the existing Centennial West facility with a new Commons Building.

  • Chartwells Launches Campus Dining Evaluation Framework

    Contract food-service management provider Chartwells Higher Education recently announced the launch of BLUEPRINT, according to a news release. The evaluation framework was designed to provide a data-driven and customizable roadmap towards optimizing campus dining services and, by extension, the student experience.