Page 16 - Campus Security & Life Safety, July/August 2020

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to conceal vaping. With an open platform philosophy, HALO can seamlessly integrate to a school’s existing video surveillance system to help identify who is coming out of a bathroom immediately after the alert.
“HALO has won 23 awards and counting and has been a real game changer when it comes to securing privacy areas,” said David Antar, president at IPVideo Corporation. “We are proud of the enhance- ments we have made with the release of HALO 2.0 and currently have the device deployed in over 1,000 schools in the United States and international markets.”
Safeguarding Students’ Health and Safety with One Device
With an enrollment of over 2,250 students on campus, making it one of the larger high schools in Contra Costa County in the Bay Area of California, Clayton Valley Charter High School (CVCHS) heard about vape detection technology after a nearby school was test- ing out the HALO units in some of their bathrooms.
CVCHS’s administrator over discipline wanted to get a handle on how big the vaping problem really was on the CVCHS campus and presented a case to the school board for a pilot program. To their surprise, not only was the pilot approved, but the board increased the budget and approved the HALO device for every single restroom at the school. 30 HALO units were seamlessly installed in under two weeks in restrooms throughout the school by a certified IPVideo
Corp. security systems integrator, IT Management. Within the first few days of deployment, the devices sent around 300 text alerts to the school’s security team for vaping alerts; confirming CVCHS had a serious vaping issue on its hands.
Due to HALO, the administrative team was able to locate students who used vape with THC in it and immediately place the students in counseling to help them overcome their addiction or any other issues that arose from the intervention by the school.
“Our advice to other schools out there in similar situations is don’t fear technology. A high-tech problem like vaping requires a high- tech solution like HALO to solve the problem,” said Sunny Shergill, special projects manager at CVCHS. “Our HALO investment has paid off well for us by giving our school the ability to identify the students who participate in vaping and may need drug counseling, so we can get them the help that they need to overcome it. Finding the right technology and integrator partner is crucial to implementing a suc- cessful solution and we were fortunate to have found both.”
Schools Making the Grade, Becoming Safer with HALO 2.0
One of the new features of HALO 2.0 is spoken key word alerting, which allows students and staff members to call for help by simply speaking a key word phrase like “HALO HELP” in the room where the sensor is located. The alert is instantly sent to a school’s security team for immediate response. The new functionality available with
16 campuslifesecurity.com | JULY/AUGUST 2020
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