Muskogee schools studying notification, security systems

By Cathy Spaulding
Phoenix Staff Writer

May 11, 2007 12:35 am

— Next school year, parents in Muskogee Public Schools could hear about school emergencies, school closings, even school carnivals on their home computers, cell phones or BlackBerries.
Plus, Muskogee High School students and faculty could face more secure entrances to their buildings.
MPS officials are studying various programs to help speed and improve their ability to get mass messages out to parents and to improve high school security.
Administrators looked at one such system, offered by Honeywell Building Solutions, on Tuesday.
Jim Wilson, assistant superintendent for support and personnel, said officials are working to get proposals before the Muskogee Board of Education this summer and to have systems installed by the start of the 2008 school year in August.
MPS Campus Police Chief Dan Hall said officials are looking at systems that do several things.
“We want to update our camera systems at our school entrances,” he said. “We want more of a secure campus.”
All schools except Muskogee High School allow visitor entry only at the main entrance and have magnetically locked doors and security cameras at each entrance. Visitors ring a doorbell and the school staff looks through the camera before letting the visitor in.
The high school has a security gate at its parking lot entrance, but no security access cameras at its building entrances.
Hall said he looked at security access systems at several area schools, most notably Jenks High School.
“They have the system like what we’re looking at,” he said. “That system also has attendance controls and truancy controls.”
Such systems could help track students who are cutting class, he said.
Wilson said the district also is looking at security cameras for buses.
“But there is a lot of cost involved,” Wilson said, adding that the systems could cost between $100,000 and $200,000.
The district also is looking for systems to quickly notify parents of emergencies or school closings.
In late March, one Muskogee elementary school received a bomb threat within 30 minutes before the end of the school day on a Friday afternoon. But officials were not able to notify all the parents of exactly what happened until a letter was sent home with students the following Monday.
A mass notification system also would let parents know about weather-related school closings, officials said.
Representatives from Honeywell Building Solutions presented their Instant Alert program to school officials this week.
The Instant Alert program uses a Web service hosted and secured by a central data center. The system is capable of sending more than 100,000 written messages simultaneously through e-mail, cell phones, pagers or other messaging devices, Instant Alert Product Manager Karla Lemmon said in a conference call.
Text also could be converted into a voice message on telephones, or voice messages could be recorded and transcribed into text, she said. With a username and password, parents and students could apply for as many modes of instant communication as they want.
The system has different levels of notification, so a parent may get a telephone call about an emergency lockdown, but not a bake sale.
Wilson said the district is looking at several notification systems.

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