DCS Board approves high-tech security system

By: Michelle Friesen
Source: The Herald-News
05-07-2008

Dayton City School is taking new measures to ensure the safety of its students by installing a new security check for the lobby of the school. The Dayton City School Board approved the installation of the machine during Monday night’s meeting.

LobbyGuard is a self-service visitor management machine whose purpose is to guard students against predators and those who have been banned from the school due to inappropriate behavior.

When a person enters the school, he would sign in through a touch-screen interface with visual and audio cues. Audio is available in both English and Spanish.

A visitor would then scan his driver’s license, and the machine would perform a background check against the LobbyGuard national compilation of state sex offenders. It would take a real-time photograph to print on a badge. The badge would contain information containing the visitor’s name, affiliation or company, reason for visiting and the date and time.

“If we saw someone in the hall who was supposed to go to special education and he was over by the cafeteria or gym, we would know that he was out of place,” said Dayton City School Superintendent Richard Fisher.

After completing this process, LobbyGuard would then store this visitor information in a secure database. If there were reason for alarm, a text message would alert school authorities.

Not only does LobbyGuard protect against predators, it can also be used for parent, student and faculty registration. All that is required is a wave of a bar-coded key tag across a scanner. It would also eliminate any paperwork and paper logbooks.

Volunteers at the school would have a new benefit in that they would be able to keep track of their hours using LobbyGuard by scanning in and out.

Because it is self-service, when visitors sign out using LobbyGuard, the security and reception staff should be able to manage their time more efficiently elsewhere, according to Pitney Bowes, the manufacturers of the machine.

The DCS Parent-Teacher Organization has volunteered to pay for the machine. “If it prevented one person from getting into our building, it should be there,” said City Manager Frank Welch.

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