Embarking on a Large-Scale Migration
Baltimore County Public Schools replaces legacy system with AXIS Camera Station and thousands of Axis cameras to monitor 176 schools, a bus depot and other properties. Axis dual-lens and panoramic cameras further reduce licensing fees, saving the district millions.
Scrambling to replace a legacy security system
When you are one of the largest school systems in the country, what do you do when your security system provider suddenly gives notice that it’s decided to stop doing business in North America? Such was the case for Baltimore County Public Schools, the twenty-second largest school system in the United States. Faced with the unexpected news, the Baltimore County Public Schools set out to find a new solution from a vendor who would not only provide high quality, affordable technology but would contractually commit to long-term support for its products.
“We not only needed to replace the video management system,” says Byron Jenkins, Senior Operations Supervisor for Building Security and Life Safety Systems in the Baltimore County Public Schools. “We needed to replace the cameras as well. We looked at products from multiple venders, comparing their functionality, reliability, and price points. This made the decision process pretty straightforward.”
Choosing a VMS was a bit more challenging. Many of the major players either wouldn’t support the school system’s legacy cameras as the district gradually transitioned to Axis cameras or would charge an outrageous fee to do so.
“When we looked at what Axis had to offer, it was an entirely different story,” shares Nick Blunt, Field Representative for Fire Alarm and Security Systems for Baltimore County School System. “Their VMS could seamlessly support our legacy cameras as we migrated to new Axis technology. Axis was also open to customizing AXIS Camera Station to our needs. Plus, they offer a five-year warranty on their cameras and servers.”
In a school system as large as ours, it’s important to have a reliable, intuitive video management system that can handle the load and video cameras that can deliver great image clarity day and night.
Assigning viewing privileges
Each school receives one or two AXIS Camera Station S11 Recorder Series units, depending on how many cameras are being supported. The recorders are preconfigured and preloaded with AXIS Camera Station video management software including licenses for 48 channels.
“We use active directory to manage viewing rights and restrict administrative access to the system,” explains Blunt. “So for instance, a school’s principal, vice principal, and security resource officer are permitted to live view the cameras in their school from their desktops. This allows us to grant specific video access to employees that require it.”
Blunt says there’s been a lot of positive feedback from users. Because users find the system so easy to learn to operate, when there’s staff turnover some school principals have taken it upon themselves to train their new assistant principals. “That allows us at the administration level to spend less on training and more time on system management,” states Blunt.
Blunt also reports that in addition to being “blown away” by the image quality, users especially like the video export functionality. “If they have a concern about a person coming into the building, they can take a snapshot of the video with AXIS Camera Station and immediately forward that image to the safety officer,” shares Blunt. “That feature alone has really improved response time to potential problems.”
Choosing a select group of cameras
The school district decided that to simplify installation, maintenance, and support, it would limit the variety of Axis cameras it would deploy. “We set up every school with the same camera models,” shares Jenkins. “The portfolio includes panoramic and dual-sensor cameras because they give us wider coverage with fewer cameras. We complemented those models with fixed dome cameras.”
In addition to delivering better image clarity than their old camera system, the Axis cameras support Axis Zipstream technology that cuts the district’s bandwidth consumption and storage requirements in half. Moreover, the cameras’ highly sensitive Lightfinder technology enables the district to capture lifelike-color and detailed images of events even at night.
“We had an incident at one of our schools late at night and Lightfinder was able to capture a detailed image of the individual,” states Jenkins. “We shared that video with local law enforcement and within a week they were able to catch the guy.”
The district typically installs AXIS P37 Panoramic Camera Series on the exterior corners of buildings, supplementing their coverage with outdoor-ready AXIS P32 Dome Camera Series devices. They place a dual-sensor AXIS P37 Panoramic Camera Series camera at building entrances to monitor who is entering and exiting. They also deploy these dual-sensor cameras in hallways to monitor two directions simultaneously.
“The dual-sensor cameras give us twice the coverage but only utilize one license and one cable run,” states Nick Blunt. “So, they not only improve building security exponentially, they also significantly reduce our licensing fees.” By the time they complete the project, Blunt estimates that nearly 10,000 Axis cameras will be in operation throughout the district.
Enforcing student privacy policy
“It’s been refreshing to work with a company that listens to our ideas and helps us implement solutions specifically tailored to our needs,” declares Jenkins.
One example he shared dealt with how schools bookmark video they want to save. Like student data, recorded video falls under the auspices of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). “Schools can request video be archived, that footage is then saved on a separate secure server,” says Jenkins.
When Jenkins realized that the bookmark feature in the initial version of AXIS Camera Station allowed school users to circumvent the process and violate FERPA, he raised the concern with Axis. In response, Axis software engineers modified the bookmark feature to bar school administrators from undermining policy and archiving video on their local school servers.
In fact, several other custom changes that Axis built into the VMS for the school system were incorporated into later releases of AXIS Camera Station. The collaboration is further cemented with regular meetings with product engineers in Sweden.
Looking down the road
In addition to increasing their camera count in the coming years, Baltimore County Public Schools are testing several other products in the Axis portfolio, including 2N® IP Verso video intercoms for their administrative offices and AXIS License Plate Verifier analytics for their school parking lots.
Products & solutions
Get in touch
Want to know how you can benefit from Axis solutions? Get in touch and we will help you.
Contact us