Page 95 - Security Today, November/December 2019

“We do have students who just want to be out of class. Because of the fobs, we can see how many students are leaving a certain teacher’s room to go to the library, go to the cafeteria, or go to the nurse and we can get a traffic pattern,” Woolard said. “We can also see if they’re going somewhere different than where they were supposed to go. Now we can look at when a fob was swiped and then pull up the security cameras for that time to see what was going on and who was there.”
Within the solution, access rights are managed through groups.
“There are separate permission groups for teachers and custodians. The teachers still have keys for their own individual classrooms, but the fobs let them move freely between buildings,” Duckworth said.
Woolard adds another example: “We have students who monitor the hallway and work in the office, and they periodically need key fobs to move about through the buildings. The fobs we give them are programmed only to work during certain times of the day and they don’t work after hours or before hours.”
In contrast, the administrators’ fobs work at all times; there is no limit on when they can unlock and lock doors.
Access Control Around the Clock
During the school week, the schedule for unlocking and locking the doors is programmed to align with the high school’s bell schedule, unlocking shortly before the dismissal bell and relocking soon after.
The lockdown capabilities of the system are managed remotely by the technology coordinator and technology facilitator using mobile phones. “It’s a great thing with the PDK system—it can be controlled from
anywhere,” says Smith.
They can also adjust the preset schedule to accommodate special
events both during the week and on weekends.
“They can go into the system, select that door, and specify the
predetermined amount of time it should stay unlocked before it returns to the normal sequence. They’ve been trained to really become self-sufficient at this point,” says Smith. “Our tech facilitator could be sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon when he gets a call from somebody wanting to play pick-up basketball in the gym. He can unlock the door from his couch. That’s a whole lot easier than driving up to the school to give someone a key.”
“Obviously if there’s something more elaborate or detailed that needs to be done, we’re available to provide support,” says Duckworth.
It is the Little Things that Count
When asked how the PDK solution has worked at the high school thus far, Woolard states, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how we lived without it. It’s been helpful with all kinds of issues. The ease of swiping a fob instead of digging out your keys and trying to hold on to all your stuff while you turn the key to get the door open—the new system is just unbelievably better,” she states. “Teachers tell me they wish we’d done this a long time ago.”
Those tired-out lock mechanisms are mighty grateful, too.
Margie Gurwin is a consultant and freelance writer specializing in the security industry.
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