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

  • Haws Corporation Marks 120th Anniversary

    Haws Corporation, which provides hydration and emergency safety solutions worldwide, recently announced that the company is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year, according to a news release.

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • UNH Marks Construction Milestone on Oceanic Exploration Facility

    The University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H., recently celebrated a major construction milestone with a beam-signing ceremony for the new Center of Excellence for Operational Ocean and Great Lakes Mapping, according to a news release. The facility’s ultimate goal is to support research, training and technical assistance in ocean mapping.

  • St. John Fisher University

    Classroom Revitalization – Basil Hall Room 216

    Established in 1999, the Education Design Showcase is a vehicle for showing off innovative — yet practical — solutions in planning, design, architecture, and construction. St. John Fisher University's Basil Hall Room 216 Classroom Revitalization has been recognized with an EDS 2026 Project of Distinction award in the category of Spaces.