Eagle County School District will upgrade phones, cameras this summer to promote safety
District's phones went out 4 times this year, and current camera footage storage length is 'unacceptable' at some schools
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive
The Eagle County School District will make two significant upgrades this summer to its technological systems in the name of safety and functionality. The district will be replacing the server for its security cameras and changing the vendor on which its phones run after both systems showed signs of struggling this year.
Jack Donnelly, the district’s chief technology officer, presented the upgrades to the school board during its May 14 meeting.
New camera system will allow longer storage
The district has 376 cameras on 19 servers throughout its campuses and facilities, and 177 ID building access badges to access buildings. The school district uses Avigilon technology for the cameras and ID badges. The technology provides local storage of video history, which means schools can typically store video footage for two to three weeks before it is overridden by new footage.
The school district introduced the camera security system in 2018, with around 90 security cameras and 62 access cards. The district has grown its number of cameras by 318% and its number of access cards by 185% in just seven years.
“Since we’ve added more bandwidth to the system, we’ve seen the amount of data we can store go way down, and at a couple schools, it’s unacceptable the number of days that the data is in there,” said Tad Degen, the district’s director of safety and security.
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In short, “we have a problem,” Donnelly said. “The problem is being exacerbated by Microsoft.”
The cameras run on Windows 10, which Microsoft is retiring on Oct. 14. The Avigilon cameras run on Windows 10, and the technology is too outdated to accommodate the Windows 11 upgrade.
The district will replace the Avigilon server with a new server, which will ensure video security surveillance continues and increase video storage capacity.
It will cost the district $338,000 to replace the servers, with funds coming from the portion of $100 million bond measure 5B approved by voters in November 2023 set aside for Degen to use to improve school safety.
“We have a path to get this done,” Donnelly said.
Degen said he “fully support(s) this program.”
The district will transfer its cameras over to the new server by Aug. 1 so they are back to full operation by the time school starts.
District’s phones lost service four times this year
All district facilities completely lost phone service during the school day four separate times this school year.
The first time it happened, on Nov. 6, phones were down for just 30 minutes. The second time, on Dec. 5, phones went down for seven and a half hours. On Feb. 26, the phones went down for three hours. On April 3, the phones went down for the entire school day.
The district’s phone system, which was installed in 2018, is currently set up so that if its one on-premises anchor circuit goes out, all district phones lose functionality. “Every time the circuit goes down, the phone system for the entire system goes down,” Donnelly said.
“It is obsolete and needs to be upgraded,” Donnelly said.
It currently costs the district about $105,000 per year for the system’s operating costs. Upgrading the current system would cost the district about $57,000.
Instead, Donnelly proposed that the district switch to a different system based in the cloud. “They’re rock solid,” Donnelly said.
“We’re actually going to save money, and we’ll increase our functionality,” Donnelly said.
Under the new system, the district will have two circuits with two providers, so “when one provider is down, the other provider’s circuit is up,” Donnelly said.
The district will move to Ring Central, a national provider of cloud-based communication services. “They are and have been the top vendors,” Donnelly said.
The new provider also will increase the district’s mobility, enabling employees to respond to work phone calls via an application on their cell phone.
The new system will cost the district about $87,000 annually, plus a one-time conversion fee to move over to Ring Central of $65,000.
The district’s phones will begin moving to the new program on June 9, with the project set to be completed by Aug. 8.
