Surveillance coming to schools

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- Two district schools are installing hidden cameras to

catch vandals in the act.

Surveillance equipment at each of Newport-Mesa Unified School

District’s 29 schools is part of the $163-million school bond plan, but

Corona del Mar High School and TeWinkle Middle School are putting cameras

up pronto.

It is a project that has been in the works at Corona del Mar for some

time.

“We have the money in our safe schools grant and have gotten a bid

from a contractor, but have just been delayed a few weeks because it is a

$20,000 project,” said Don Martin, the school’s principal.

In part, the project has been put on hold at Corona del Mar while

district staff members wait to see how some new cameras at TeWinkle pan

out.

They are being installed at TeWinkle free of charge as part of a pilot

program to test new technology, said Mike Fine, the district’s assistant

superintendent in charge of business services.

The camera system, created by c Video Inc. of San Diego -- an offshoot

of Qubic Corp., a national defense contractor -- provides digital video

recording and transmission, which will send images shot at the school to

administrators’ terminals via the computer network, said the company’s

president, Alfonso Tumini.

The images are stored on the hard drive of the computer, he said,

eliminating the need for videocassette recorders and videotapes.

The system will allow principals and administrators to survey the

grounds from their computer -- wherever they are.

“If an alarm goes off in the middle of night, any of us with access

can call up images of school from home,” Fine said. Having the images

stored on the computer’s hard drive will mean not having to search

through hours of videotapes for a specific time and day.

“So if you want to see Feb. 22 at 11:52 a.m., there it is,” Tumini

said.

The biggest perk to the system is c Video has devised a way to

condense video files so the images may be sent over existing networks

without taking up much space and crashing the system, Tumini said.

It could mean big savings for the district, Fine said.

For principals, it means peace of mind.

“I think it’s something that will be very helpful,” said Sharon Fry,

TeWinkle’s principal. “We’re mostly concerned about vandalism and people

coming onto our campus who shouldn’t be here on weekends.”

Fry has notified parents and students, and said she doesn’t expect any

negative response to the cameras.

“I think, as a parent, I’d like to know my child was safe,” she said.

“And any reasonable measure we can take to make sure of that we will.”

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