Middle Schools to Get Surveillance Cameras

By John Norton, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Feb. 21–Surveillance cameras should be operating by mid-May in District 60′s middle schools and by next year, anyone entering the schools will have to have an electronic card or be buzzed in.

At the district’s last Board of Education meeting, the parent of a Risley student asked for better security at the schools after her daughter was accosted in the school’s hallway by a man who allegedly made sexual remarks to her.

Beefed up security systems were already in the works, however, according to Mark Gazette, the district’s director of facilities. Part of the nearly completed $100 million bond project included installation of wiring for cameras and electronically-controlled doors. The high schools already have cameras with digital recorders and monitors in the offices of the school resource officers, police whose salary is split by the district and the Pueblo Police Department.

District 60 spokesman Greg Sinn said that it hasn’t been determined who will monitor the middle school cameras but it likely will be the officers assigned to those schools.

In addition to the cameras, he said, card access systems will be put in operation by the next school year.

The next step will be to tighten security for the elementary schools. He said that the district is seeking grant money for electronically controlled doors and cameras at the elementary schools.

Better security for the high schools is being studied, he said, but remains problematic because of the greater number of doors and types of access at high school buildings.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

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