School Check-in system adds layer of security to schools

By Laura Camper
The Times-Georgian
Posted: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 1:22 AM EDT

Suzanne Miceli receives a visitor pass in the lobby of Carrollton Middle School Monday. Miceli volunteers in the school's library. Carrollton city schools are now using an electronic system called a LobbyGuard Kiosk to keep track of visitors in the schools. (Photo by Michelle Lepianka/Times-Georgian.)

As violence in the schools and child predators become more predominant in the news, schools are looking for effective ways to keep the children in their charge safe.

The Carrollton City School System has purchased LobbyGuard kiosks for all of its schools to keep track of who is coming in the school buildings each day and why the visitors are there.

“Our initial reason is for safety,” Chief Operating Officer Steve Spofford said. “I think it was worth every bit of the money.”

The middle school, which has had the LobbyGuard kiosk for two years, was the school system’s testing ground for the security system, Spofford said. Every visitor checks in at the kiosk and signs out when they leave, he said.

“When you sign in, it checks the National Sex Offender Registry, and it alerts us if someone is trying to visit a school that’s on that list,” Spofford said.

The kiosk then prints out a badge with the visitor’s picture, name and the destination of their visit, he said.
The badges make it easy for staff and faculty to spot someone who is in the wrong part of the school, said Trent North, principal the of the middle school.

“The expectation of the school is that any employee that sees you in an unauthorized area of the building, that we’re supposed to help give you directions or ask you how we can be of assistance,” North said. “One of the most important things we do in education is to make sure that our students and faculty, that they’re safe.”

Two things that are most helpful in that mission are the kiosk and the camera system, he said.
“Between the two, we’re able to monitor when (visitors) enter, when they exit and their movements while they are in the building,” North said. “We want parents to be able to come in and visit their children anytime. At the same time, we’ve got to limit them from going all over the building.”

A side benefit of the system is that with the information gathered by the kiosks North can create reports listing how many parents came to eat lunch with their children or how many parents came to help out in the classroom or to meet with an administrator or counselor.

“We try to convey to parents and to the community that we want them to be a part of their child’s education,” North said. “This report allows me to assess whether we’re meeting that objective.”
Spofford said the data stored in the systems also helps the school district create reports to meet state and federal guidelines.

“For instance, when we have parent-teacher conferences, we have to keep a tally of all who come and when they meet,” he said. “This allows us to store that data.”

Investigating the LobbyGuard kiosk system was the result of discussions with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

“One of the things that, as we reviewed our safety plan with GEMA, that we wanted to do a better job of is accounting for who was in the building,” Spofford said. “If there is any kind of emergency, we know the students that are there because we take roll every period, but with visitors to the school unless we have some record of who’s there, then if we need to evacuate the school or account for everybody, we can’t tell who’s left in the school.”

He does concede that the system is not foolproof at identifying all visitors.

“We admit openly that schools are designed to let people in, not keep people out,” Spofford said. “When you have as many ways in and as many ways out as all the schools on the campus, especially at the high school and the junior high, it’s difficult to secure the building.”

With that in mind, the schools are all equipped with security cameras for monitoring activity inside the building, he said. The pictures, which can be stored for about a month, can be viewed in his office or, in case of emergency, by the police online, Spofford said.