Coulee News - Printable Version

Story originally printed in the Coulee News or online at www.couleenews.com

Published - Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Bangor explores security cameras in school

The Bangor School District is considering joining the growing number of districts with security cameras in the schools.

At the Dec. 17 meeting of the Bangor School Board, Principal Don Addington raised the issue of security cameras for the high/middle school.

“All but two schools in our conference have them and they would solve many problems in general building security that otherwise can take us days or weeks to resolve,” Addington said.

As an illustration of how cameras can save time — even if they don’t capture the incident in question, Addington gave the example of a theft in a locker room. “Obviously, we can’t have cameras in the locker room, but we could go back and look at who comes in and out and narrow things down that way,” he said.

Addington said the price of security cameras has come way down in the past few years, with color cameras now being cheaper than black and white ones. “I think 22 cameras would probably cover the whole school, although we would need one in the parking lot as well,” he said.

After some preliminary price checking, Addington said the price of such a system ranged from $18,000 to $42,000, with the cameras having the ability to store data for two weeks. Board members authorized school administrators to get firmer cost estimates.

“We will get back to you in a few months with the numbers,” Foegen said.

Other business

In other action, the board:

Approved the second reading of a data directory policy that will provide guidelines on how and when student informatioin can be released to the public. The policy will go into effect next fall.

Approved Bangor’s contribution to the hockey co-op with Sparta and West Salem for two more years. Four Bangor students are on the team and one is a co-captain.

Tabled action on the installation of acoustical tiles in the new elementary school until after the Wisconsin school board convention next month so Foegen can find out what other administrators have done in similar situations.

“We don’t want to spend nine grand on this and then find out later that it doesn’t work or that there were cheaper alternatives,” said board member Paul Wuensch.

Learned from Foegen that work will be done on the new elementary school addition over the Christmas break. “They will be re-grouting, smoothing and cleaning some of the tiles, and we’ve also got cold air coming in in some places,” Foegen said. “We can’t seem to get the temperature above 65 in the large locker room.”

Foegen assured the board that final payments to the contractors will not be made until the problems are fixed.