Education

Best of Both Worlds for Northwestern School System

  • IndustryEducation
  • CustomerWashakie School District No.1
  • RegionWyoming, USA
  • IDIS PartnerAdTech Fire Alarm and Security

Background

A commitment to learning

Located within the Big Horn Basin in Northwestern Wyoming, Washakie School District No. 1 communities within Washakie County, including the county seat of Worland. Set against the distant backdrops of the Big Horn and Wind River mountains, Washakie County represents much of the values and spirit of America’s wide open northwest. Washakie School District serves approximately 1350 of the area’s K-12 public school students, operating five schools and an education resource center throughout the district.

Washakie’s commitment to providing an ideal learning environment for their communities includes an unwavering commitment to ensuring the safety and security of all who visit their campuses. Mindful of both modern school security challenges and the advantages of newer, high-performance security technologies, the district set out to overhaul their surveillance infrastructure in 2018

Challenges

Modern security without trade-offs

For Washakie School District No. 1, the optimization and modernization of the district’s surveillance began where all district projects begin: with students. The district’s Vision Statement speaks to their commitment to a “cohesive…learning community [that inspires] all learners to become productive,” and that all such experiences be authentic. Unexpected disruptions, threats to the safety and security of school populations, undiscovered accident risks and maintenance concerns can undermine authentic and productive learning—as can an excessive or obtrusive security presence. Further, budget dollars and human resources allocated disproportionately to security concerns can draw from the educational mission.

For Washakie, as with all public school districts, an ideal security solution must be high performing, reliable, and comprehensive, while minimizing disruption and respecting the fiscal priorities and stewardship requirements inherent in an education-first mission. Washakie required coverage of its geographically separate sites—preferably with distributed infrastructure allowing for further enhanced privacy and reliability—while preserving the ability to manage and administer surveillance operations centrally and sought proven options that would not require sacrifices in quality or performance in exchange for economically feasible pricing.

Solution

Surveillance technology for every requirement

To optimize the school district’s surveillance infrastructure, Washakie partnered with South Dakota’s AdTech Fire and Alarm (a Rapid Fire Protection company) and security specialist Kurt Stauffer to design a modern surveillance solution. After comprehensive review and analysis of the district’s needs, Stauffer and AdTech selected the IDIS Total Solution to provide Washakie with next-generation, feature-rich technology that easily met the need for comprehensive surveillance across the school district, while also delivering reliability and high performance without unnecessary cost.

AdTech’s focused on a comprehensive deployment of cameras and NVRs. Each camera selected to provide consistent views and situational awareness across all environments and conditions. IDIS’s wide range of purpose-built surveillance cameras leveraging the company’s ground breaking DirectIP technology, provide options ideal for the education sector’s most specific surveillance needs, including indoor and outdoor environments, cold-weather and vandal resistant designs, high and low light, and both expansive and enclosed spaces. IDIS’s Total Solution concept (which guarantees ease of installation, use, and interoperability) and longtime reputation as a digital recording innovator allowed for Washakie’s ideal mix of cameras—including the company’s award-winning Fisheye with industry-leading dewarping technology—to be deployed as part of a more secure, and less complex NVR-based solution, perfect for the district’s specific needs.

Results

Delivering the best of both worlds

Washakie is already seeing the benefits of the design and technology innovations comprising their modernized surveillance solution. The NVR-based project utilizes local, distributed storage, enhancing security, reducing complexity, and increasing reliability on both the processing and storage-side of the surveillance equation, and eliminating any single point of failure. This is specifically facilitated by IDIS’s industry leading NVR offerings, which offer additional redundancy and storage optimization features and the longest NVR warranty the industry, ensuring the reliability and low cost of ownership that is essential to meeting both the district’s security requirements and fiduciary responsibilities. With the company’s powerful IDIS Solution Suite VMS, the district is still able to centrally administer and monitor all schools’ systems, giving Washakie the best of both worlds—the security and reliability of a distributed system and the administrative control and situational awareness of a centralized system.