EDMOND —
Visitors to all Edmond schools this year will be greeted by new high-tech safety kiosks called LobbyGuard. The monitoring system can instantly check all campus visitors against national and state sex offender registries and notify school and district personnel if a match is made.
The kiosks require visitors to have their picture taken and swipe a driver’s license to receive a printed photo ID badge. If a visitor is cleared, they will have access to the school. If not, the information shows up on a web-based, secure server that sends a message to school administrators and resource officers who can immediately take appropriate action. Frequent visitors, such as PTO volunteers, can be assigned a convenient key tag containing a unique barcode that will make signing in and out at each subsequent visit take just a few seconds.
“In this day and age, our current system of having visitors use a sign-in sheet with no proof of identification is simply not adequate,” said Jim Rothrock, district safety coordinator. “This system greatly improves our ability to protect our students by running an instant background check on the visitor which immediately identifies if they are a registered sex offender. In addition, it can also identify visitors that have been manually entered by EPS staff due to custody or court-ordered situations.”
Edmond has tested the LobbyGuard kiosks at Orvis Risner and Chisholm elementary schools.
“Piloting the program at two schools allowed us to see how it would be received by visitors, vendors and volunteers. At one of the schools, we were alerted that someone who tried to enter the school was listed on a sex offender database so we knew immediately that this was a useful tool that could have significant value district-wide.”
The LobbyGuard system cost the district $200,000 which came from a 2010 bond issue approved by Edmond voters.
“As a board we strongly believe that this is money well spent,” said Edmond Board of Education President Jamie Underwood. “The safety and security of our students is a top priority and we want to do anything we can to protect them.”
LobbyGuard is part of existing security measures used by the district that include interior and exterior video surveillance, two-way radios, School Resource Officers and safe school committees.
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Related Photos
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PHOTO PROVIDED Orvis Risner Elementary School Registrar Amy Arbuckle demonstrates how to use the school's visitor monitoring system called LobbyGuard. All schools in the Edmond district have been outfitted with the new kiosks which instantly check all campus visitors against national and state sex offender registries and notify school and district personnel if a match is made.
Discussion
High-tech safety tool beefs up security at Edmond schools
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