Products & Demos

Ridley High Enhances School Security with SARA

Ridley High School is the newly constructed high school for the Ridley School District. Located in a suburban area south of Philadelphia, Ridley High School has a student body of 1600 students in grades 9-12. Like most high schools, Ridley strives to provide a safe and productive learning environment for the students. And, like most high schools, Ridley must deal with student problems such as smoking, vandalism, and truancy.

Don Otto, Director of Computer and Network Services for the Ridley School District, has been aggressive in his use of technology to improve communications, security, and safety in the school. Recently, Ridley School District partnered with Status Solutions to implement the SARA alarm monitoring system in the high school. SARA, short for Situational Awareness and Response Assistant, gives Ridley a single point of integration for several of the safety and security systems in the school, including the Ademco access control and the Simplex fire systems. Says Otto, "SARA does not replace the systems we have in place, but instead provides a level of flexibility, control, and awareness we did not previously have."

In addition to integration with the access control and fire systems, Ridley also installed the SARA Cigarette Busters to combat student smoking. The Cigarette Buster is an infrared flame detector that can be concealed in student restrooms. At Ridley, a simple flick of a lighter or strike of a match will cause mobile staff to be immediately alerted via their two-way radios.

Ridley Successes with SARA

On its first day of operation, SARA Cigarette Busters caught six student smokers. Since then, the system has continued to monitor the restrooms and catches the smokers brave enough to try it again. Says Otto, “Ridley fines student smokers $50 each time they are caught smoking. Since installing SARA, we have fined students over $1300, but more importantly, we have greatly reduced smoking in our school.”

In addition to student smoking, Ridley also had another problem common among schools. Ridley had installed security cameras throughout the school that recorded activity onto tapes. School officials suspected unauthorized access to the school, but it is difficult to review hours of tape, looking for a single incident. Using SARA integration with the access control system, school officials were able to pinpoint the time of each unauthorized access, and thus were able to quickly find the incident on tape. SARA’s integration with the Simplex fire panel will alert mobile staff via two-way radio or overhead paging of an alarm, including its location as soon as it happens. This feature allows staff to respond immediately to an emergency. In most systems, staff would first have to go to the fire panel to identify the active alarm.

Ridley's Future with SARA

Building on their successes, Ridley would like to continue the process of integrating their building systems into SARA. Of particular interest to Don Otto are the building control systems and the PBX. Says Otto, “Many of the systems today have alarm reporting features, but SARA’s single point of integration, and flexible programming has made it a great choice for Ridley.”

SARA Alarm Monitoring for Schools

SARA is an integrated alarm monitoring and alerting system designed specifically for use by schools. Its powerful web interface provides school administrators and teachers with heightened awareness of the operation of their schools. SARA is a powerful tool that school officials can use to increase the safety and efficiency of their schools. SARA provides a single point of integration for many of the systems within a school, including the fire system, access control, PBX, video, and building control. In addition to existing systems, SARA also provides enhanced features via a wireless network of monitored devices. With these wireless devices, schools can monitor such things as

• Student Smoking
• Critical Equipment Failure, Refrigerator Temperature, Pump Pressure
• Motion Detection, Interior Door Access
• Mobile Duress and Fixed Panic

SARA then allows school officials to flexibly determine how alarms will be reported. Alarms can be reported via cell phones, two-way radio, overhead paging, email, or an Internet browser, to name a few. Flexible schedules allow alarms to be handled differently at different times of the day.

Finally, SARA provides a reporting mechanism that allows users to generate reports that detail alarm activity in the school. These reports can combine alarm activity from all the different systems into a single report, giving the user a complete view of the school.