Page 15 - Campus Security & Life Safety, May/June 2019

"The leadership of HISD has taken safety and security to a new level with the highest quality of products and solutions, meeting the demands of installation at new schools and existing campuses."
By Ralph C. Jensen
lations will be implementation of Salient’s Power Ultra hardware, which are intended to replace an obsolete Windows XP, which is no longer serviced by Microsoft. Power Ultra is the new standard of storage from the IT perspective.
“This hardware will allow HISD to grow over the next five years and give them twice as much horsepower than they currently need,” Fisher said. “This is a major move to IP video surveillance, and each server will easily handle more than 200 IP cameras.”
Building schools and refurbishing the cur- rent installed base at HISD is no easy task. The district covers territory in nine munici- palities and some unincorporated areas in Greater Houston, including all of the cities of Bellaire, West University Place, Southside Place, and most of the area within the Hous- ton city limits. HISD also takes students from the Harris County portion of Missouri City, a portion of Jacinto City, a small por- tion of Hunters Creek Village, a small por- tion of Piney Point Village, and a small por- tion of Pearland; Pearland annexed territory within HISD between 1998 and 2005. There are more than 209,000 students, speaking nearly 100 languages. There are nearly 12,000 teachers and nearly 28,000 support staff.
Recently Complete Schools
“Safety and security is part of the project scope for all recently completed schools and those currently under construction,” district officials said. “This includes the 40 schools that are part of the 2012 Bond Program, as well as seven more schools, either recently completed or under construction, that are not funded by the 2012 Bond.”
Additionally, the 2012 Bond Program includes a $17.3 million line item dedicated to safety and security upgrades at schools districtwide. That focus was further strength- ened in 2017, when the HISD Board of Edu- cation allocated an additional $12.1 million for districtwide safety and security needs.
“We are pleased to be a part of this safety and security upgrade at HISD. Using Salient technology at the headend of the security systems says a lot about our open architec- ture, and the trust that the school district has placed in us,” Fisher said. “As we help HISD move towards a total IP solution, we are also
pleased to work with the HISD IT depart- ment and upgrade their network cabling.”
Not all HISD campuses fall under the bond program. Many safety and security upgrades are made based on a review of assessed needs at various campuses. Most upgrades are at elementary and middle schools, because so many high schools have been or will be replaced or rebuilt with the district-standard safety and security mea- sures already incorporated.
“The upgrades have been completed par- tially in-house and partially by contracting with construction, technology and security vendors,” district officials said. “In regards to wire pulls, all new campuses have robust fiber optic and wire backbones, minimizing the need for new wire pulls. For upgrades at existing campuses, the amount of wiring needed and pull times will vary.”
While Salient System’s VMS has been in place throughout their decades-long security contract, the company’s technology team has been working hand-in-hand with HISD’s Information Technology division with the installation of the Power Ultra in new schools, while Security Maintenance, a team under the purview of the Business Opera- tions Facilities and Fleet Services Depart- ment, is overseeing server replacement in existing schools.
“The leadership of HISD has taken safety and security to a new level with the highest quality of products and solutions, meeting the demands of installation at new schools and existing campuses,” Fisher said. “Our goal has been to ensure that the software and storage systems we provide lend themselves to the overall health of the security system. The increased level of visibility in the ‘live
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