Riverside, Calif., Schools Respond to Incidents with Plan for a Surveillance System

RIVERSIDE - If disaster strikes a Riverside school, parents won'thave to wait for the news.

The Riverside Unified School District is getting a sophisticated emergency notification system and security cameras this year thanks to a $274,200 federal grant awarded through the Riverside Police Department.

The district will provide $274,200 in matching funds, asrequired by the grant. Deputy Superintendent Michael Fine said the money will be used to install permanent security cameras in all of the middle and high schools, and to incorporate "Enhanced 911" and "Reverse 911" features into the district's new phone system.

Patty Tambe, of the Riverside Police Department, said this is the first time the department has applied for the COPS Secure Our Schools grant, which is awarded through the Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing. Tambe said Riverside was one of nine California agencies to receive thegrants this year.

Fine said the new 911 features are by far the more exciting part of the grant. "Reverse 911" will allow the district to notify parents and staff much more quickly in the event of an emergency than the current system allows, Fine said. The district will be able to send phone, e-mail and text messages to all parents or any subset of parents - such as the parents of children at a particular school or the parents of children who ride school buses, Fine said.

In the past, the district has used school-specific auto dialers, which take about 45 seconds per call. The new system will be able to make thousands of calls per minute, Fine said. Officials said Reverse 911 would have been a big help last November when a gas main break prompted the evacuation of Grant Elementary. In their grant proposal, officials said that after four hours of auto dialing, almost a third of the 357 students' parents had yet to be contacted. They said Reverse 911 would have finished the entire job in less than five minutes. The "Enhanced 911" system will show emergency dispatchers the rooms where 911 school calls originate, Fine said. The current system only shows the school address.

CAMERA SYSTEM

Fine said the security cameras will be accessible online, which will save workers a lot of time chasing false alarms after hours. A pilot security camera system was installed in August at Martin Luther King High School. That system was paid for entirely by the district, Fine said. The district has had limited surveillance equipment for several years. Mobile cameras have been used in problem areas, such as repeat vandalism targets. The district also has motion detector cameras that make an announcement and snap a picture when activated, Fine said.

In the grant proposal, district officials said they have been using hand-held video cameras to record student behavior during lunch and other group activities. When footage of bad behavior has been available, officials said, it has been invaluable in conferences with parents and police. School officials cited a June 2005 after-school brawl at King High School that involved 30 students as a case in which cameras would have helped. They said seven administrators spent an entire day trying to piece together what happened and find out who was involved.

Fine said the cameras would also help with vandalism and theft - which he said are a bigger problem for the district. Fine said North High School has experienced extensive vandalism and Riverside Polytechnic High School has had a recent rash of incidents.

In May, school officials offered a $3,000 reward in an attempt to catch thieves who stole about $15,000 in electronics equipment from Ramona High School.

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