KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. –Kanawha County Schools will soon be getting much needed security camera upgrades for their schools and buses.
The schools Board of Education members voted Thursday afternoon during their meeting to approve the $8, 641,350-dollar purchase of a new security camera system from Advantage Technology that will be located in all schools and buses in Kanawha County.
District’s Director of Security Brian Carper and Executive Director of Technology Leah Sparks gave spoke in front of the board about the new cameras and why they were needed.
Carper said that the cameras the schools have right now are on two different systems which makes it time consuming to access the videos. He says that there are only two or three control points where personnel can access them from and they must login with their credentials.
“It will increase security at all of the schools, it will bring everybody on to one standard, easy to use platform,” Carper said.
Sparks explained that they went through all of the options that the company had and landed on the Verkada system would be the best to bring in to the schools. The cameras would all be on the same system and would store the videos on the cloud.
She said that personnel would not have to login to view live or recorded videos, which will make it easier to share the videos to whomever they need to if an emergency situation arose.
“Is that you can share this easily with those that need it,” Sparks said. “So, for instance if we had a large event at one of our schools, a concern where we need first responders to get there, we can share that video within seconds with the first responders, they can view live what is happening inside the school, outside the school wherever the concern is.”
She did say that Metro911 would have the platform ready as well.
She said since before Spring Break they have been testing out the cameras at Elk View Middle and the buses.
Sparks said that so far it has been successful because there hasn’t been any camera issues or outages, and the staff has reported good things about them.
“It saves a huge amount of time for our administrators because there able to solve issues quickly, there able to take their time and focus it on other things and they also have mentioned that the camera quality is so much better, that helps them as well,” she said.
In order to get the estimate for the schools, the company did a walkthrough of each school to make a map of the school, which will be available on the system for emergency personnel to view if needed.
“There are very detailed maps included with this project where things will be located and those will also be loaded into the platform so first responders can easily see those as well,” Sparks said.
Each camera comes with a 10-year warranty on the camera and hardware.
Carper said that every school should have the cameras installed before the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year.