There’s a clear mission for school administrators and their faculty: create a safe and supportive environment where students and staff can succeed.
Every minute that’s devoted on a lengthy investigation, every dollar that’s spent on an unexpected equipment failure, and every hour that’s dedicated to inefficient processes ultimately detracts from that core intent.
Fortunately, there are new opportunities for campus operations and intelligence, and it starts with some of the intelligent network technology that may already be installed at your institution. Cameras, speakers, intercoms, sensors, analytics, and management software all play a crucial part in helping leaders gather and analyze essential data from across a campus. Besides the security advantages, these solutions help schools make smarter and faster decisions that can streamline operations and vicariously foster a better learning environment.
Here are six ways that schools are creatively leveraging technology to improve campus operations and business intelligence.
1. Accelerating Investigations from Days to Minutes
When a potential threat emerges on campus, a swift resolution is paramount. Unfortunately, this isn’t always a reality. Consider a real-life scenario: a backpack containing ammunition magazines was found at a school. This discovery would normally trigger a campus-wide lockdown that lasts days, as staff is forced to manually scour video recordings to identify the owner.
With video analytics, this investigation was solved in a matter of minutes. By searching for specific criteria (for instance, a person with a red backpack in a certain area at a certain time), security staff can pinpoint the relevant footage in moments. In the actual case, the student who owned the backpack was identified and located by law enforcement within five minutes. The situation was promptly de-escalated, and the school day continued with minimal disruption.
Most importantly, this solution is about security and keeping students safe. But secondarily, these solutions help staff reclaim hundreds of hours of their time.
2. Enabling Predictive Maintenance to Prevent Disruptions
If the staff is the brain and the students are the heart, then the literal building is the backbone of an educational institution. If there’s a critical failure within this facility, it can cripple the entire operation, forcing staff to improvise or even cancel school.
By placing environmental sensors in key spots, facility managers and custodians can shift from a reactive maintenance approach to a predictive maintenance approach. For instance, an air quality sensor can detect smoke coming from the cafeteria before it causes emergency intervention.
Or, a temperature sensor can issue an alert to the appropriate faculty that, say, an HVAC chiller is failing. Normally, this would render classrooms unusable due to heat or cold, and it would also lead to expensive emergency repairs. This early warning allows maintenance staff to proactively address the problem, all while preventing costly downtime and ensuring that the campus remains comfortable and conducive to learning.
3. Streamlining Drop-off and Pick-up
For those involved in the daily operations of a school, the dismissal process is a key point of frustration. Teachers are armed with clipboards and walkie-talkies as they manage a long line of vehicles. This is clearly inefficient, but it also presents several safety risks.
Automated solutions like License Plate Recognition (LPR) technology can completely reshape this workflow. As a parent's vehicle enters the queue, the system can automatically identify the plate and notify staff, who will then have the student ready for a quick, safe, and orderly pickup.
Most importantly, this technology helps staff focus on student safety instead of traffic control. Vicariously, these solutions can also assist with minimizing chaos and friction, and it can even help the environment by reducing engine idling time.
4. Building a Digital Library for Effective Staff Training
To achieve operational excellence, it’s essential to employ high-quality staff training. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to deliver on their tutorials, especially for those employed in hands-on roles. How do you ensure that every custodian is properly following safety protocols for handling chemicals? Or how do you train a new front-desk employee on a school’s complex visitor policy? These issues are only compounded when staff joins an institution midway through the school year, as trainings are often reserved for the summer months.
Body-worn cameras offer a powerful solution. A lead custodian can wear a camera while demonstrating the correct way to strip and wax a floor, providing a clear, first-person video for your training library. This visual guide is invaluable for not only new hires; they can also be used for yearly refreshers and ensuring compliance. Similarly, recording an experienced front-desk employee can help standardize best practices for all new staff, ensuring a consistent visitor experience from the get-go. Remember that it's crucial to collaborate with staff and unions to establish clear policies around privacy and the use of these recordings.
5. Proactively Maintaining System Health
The value of a security or communication system naturally disappears the moment it fails. An incident that occurs in front of a non-functional camera can transform a simple investigation into a multi-day probe. Not only does this require more resources, but it could also damage a school’s reputation as people wait for answers.
While this is a concern for legacy equipment, it shouldn’t be an issue for modern solutions thanks to system health monitoring. This technology automatically alerts stakeholders when there’s a potential issue, whether it be a camera going offline, a hard drive nearing capacity, or a public address speaker malfunctioning.
Thanks to this newfound knowledge, staff can dispatch maintenance before there’s an incident or failure. This ensures that your systems are always running at peak performance.
6. Enhancing Student Services
Technology can also play an important role in supporting specialized student services. From occupational therapists to speech-language pathologists to special education teachers, documenting sessions and tracking a student’s progress is essential when demonstrating service success and compliance.
With the appropriate consent, audio and video tools can aid this process. For instance, a wearable camera worn by a therapist can record the specifics of a session, while the transcription capabilities can create an automated and searchable record of the conversation. This provides an objective, detailed account that can be used for performance review, reporting, and developing a student support system.
