ESASD

Key Stats

• 1,109 smart cameras deployed
• 10 schools, 6 non-instructional facilities, and 2 stadiums served in the district
• Only 5 hrs/mo spent on camera maintenance

Overview

Meraki has been a great partner. The team has been attentive to our needs and willing to listen, which is evident by a few feature requests we placed coming to fruition.

BRIAN BOROSH

Director of Technology, East Stroudsburg Area School District

Founded in 1891, the East Stroudsburg Area School District (ESASD) serves a large geographic area encompassing 217 square miles in parts of Monroe and Pike Counties of the Poconos in northeast Pennsylvania. The district has experienced immense and rapid growth during its more than 100 years in operation, and now facilitates nearly 7,000 students through their K-12 journey, both in-person and virtually.

Challenge

What does it take to cultivate a safe learning environment? This is a prevalent question now more than ever. Answers may vary, but a great first step starts with agile planning and tactical surveillance. Students and faculty should feel comfortable going to school knowing they have security teams looking out for them. Conversely, security staff should feel confident knowing they have accessible visibility into the environments they are serving.

The ESASD technology team, led by Director of Technology Brian Borosh, has worked hard to become more efficient and proactive in their security approach by effectively utilizing their resources to create the safest learning environment for each of their ten schools. However, due to their rural, dispersed school campuses, monitoring the safety of each was difficult and cumbersome for their school police force and administrators. They were dealing with cameras that would often break and shut down, requiring days of maintenance, not to mention travel time between school locations to manually upload footage and access faulty cameras.

This lack of visibility was taking a toll on school safety with a risk of inconsistent or nonexistent camera footage from cases of vandalism, physical altercations, and other general threats. The district also had concerns with worker’s compensation claims that could not be confirmed or verified with security footage. It was clear that the time had come to update the physical security system with modernization in mind.

The MV smart cameras have helped tremendously by cutting down on time spent doing maintenance and increasing overall visibility into school environments.

BRIAN BOROSH

Director of Technology, East Stroudsburg Area School District

Solution

For Brian and his team, a safer learning environment also meant creating a smarter one. It was clear these outdated cameras were not working correctly and costing the team money, hours, and peace of mind. They decided to partner with Meraki and take a step toward modernizing their physical security by moving into the cloud, a step that would transition each school within the district into a smarter, safer place for students and faculty alike. 

ESASD began by deploying 40 Meraki MV cloud-managed smart cameras to one of their smaller elementary schools. The cameras were placed in hallways, stairwells, and cafeterias to monitor school activity and prevent and respond to any security issues. The team was excited to learn that the installation process of each camera was incredibly simple, involving just a single Cat 6 run that could go anywhere the school had a network switch in range (100 m). This was in contrast to the cumbersome installation of the dated cameras, which required installing separate power supplies and running a coax cable to one of a few DVRs in each building.

Because of the cloud-managed nature of Meraki smart cameras, ESASD could now access footage remotely through one dashboard. This allowed the team to monitor and send footage on the fly from all 40 cameras.

The easy-to-use dashboard also made training for school police, central office administrators, HR, and principals incredibly intuitive.

Results

Happy with the initial results of the new MV smart cameras and the ease of installation and training, ESASD went school by school to remove legacy cameras and upgrade all locations. They are now using over 1,000 MV cameras across all ten schools, six non-instructional facilities, and two stadiums. This would not have been possible without the support and financial commitment from the ESASD School Board.

Since using the new cameras, ESASD has been able to better capture relevant footage in worker’s compensation claims, which has saved the district tens of thousands of dollars by proving almost half the submitted claims were inaccurate. Beyond saving the district from fraudulent case costs, the cameras have also given confidence back to students and faculty, knowing their environment is being monitored accurately, consistently, and intelligently: a confidence that is priceless.

Before collaborating with Meraki, Operations Analyst Anthony Calderone would spend several hours each week trying to keep the cameras up-and-running, costing the district more money and wasted time. With the MV smart cameras having local storage, the need for space on the SAN, as well as the maintenance upkeep that comes along with it, has been alleviated. Anthony and his team now spend very little time working on cameras, usually amounting to less than five hours per month.

Partnering with smart cloud-first Meraki cameras has helped ESASD transform the student and faculty experience by nurturing a deeper sense of well-being and security. In addition to cultivating the safest learning environment, ESASD has now positioned themselves toward creating smarter campuses and safer learning environments with an agile take on physical security.