Greater Latrobe plans elementary security camera upgrades

The Greater Latrobe School Board will consider spending about $ 120,000 on Tuesday to upgrade surveillance cameras at two elementary schools in the district.

The board is looking to add 86 combo cameras, two video recorder servers and support equipment to the Baggaley and Mountain View elementary campuses, based on quotes totaling $ 61,775 from VICON Industries of Hauppauge, NY. . This award was obtained through a central intermediate unit in Susquehanna. cooperative purchasing program for technology called PEPPM, originally known as the Pennsylvania Education Purchasing Program for Microcomputers.

If the board approves, the cabling and installation of the cameras will be taken care of by CCL Technologies of Greensburg at a cost of $ 58,304, available through the CoStars Pennsylvania cooperative bidding program.

Similarly in August, the school board approved the purchase of new security doors with controlled access in the same two elementary buildings as well as in junior high school, for a total cost of approximately 46,500. $.

Board pursues these security improvements in the context of a 242-page document district capital improvement plan which runs until 2025 and was recently posted on the district website.

“This report has been in the works for a few years,” said Kurt Thomas, Director of Facilities, Operations and Planning for Greater Latrobe. “It’s a really comprehensive in-depth look at where we are at. This gives us a plan for how we’re going to address the district’s deficiencies in capital improvements.

Informed by a site visit and assessment in the district, he said, the plan will identify and prioritize capital projects each year for review by the school board.

“It’s a living document,” he said. “It gives us kind of a map of where to go. Ideally, this document is used as a road map to support and improve district learning environments.

In December 2018, the district opened a new $ 24.8 million Latrobe Elementary School which replaced a century-old building. But, many other district schools date from the 1950s or 1960s and may require action to keep them up to modern standards.

Greater Latrobe expects to hire a consultant to complete a planning and visioning process for the district facilities. A preliminary energy audit of the buildings in the district was carried out in April by Siemens.