Selfies are now standard protocol for all visitors to public schools in St. Vital.
The Louis Riel School Division is doing away with physical sign-in binders and installing intercoms, among sweeping security upgrades that began after a registered sex offender snuck into two of its facilities in the fall.
The ongoing upgrades have a dual purpose — “helping to secure and helping to resolve, unfortunately, when the odd incident does happen,” said Clarke Hagan, director of information systems for the division encompassing 41 schools in southeast Winnipeg.
Nearly $1 million, the majority of which is for one-time expenses, has been earmarked to standardize building access and surveillance measures.
As of this spring, every site has a new sign-in station featuring a tablet using an app from Sign In Solutions, a cloud-based management and software company.
Guests and itinerant staff are now required to, upon entry, register their name and take a photo via the tablet, in addition to donning a visitor badge. The setup allows principals to track who is in their building in real time via their smartphones.
The division’s security overhaul was announced after Education Minister Tracy Schmidt called on school leaders across the province to review their access policies late last year.
Schmidt’s Dec. 1 directive was issued after the Winnipeg Police Service laid charges against a registered sex offender — the first of two rounds of recent charges — accused of grabbing a child inside Darwin School.
Scott William George is alleged to have entered the elementary school on Nov. 27 to hide in a bathroom and assault a girl who was able to break free and ran for help.
George, a 28-year-old at the time of his arrest that day, is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. He is charged with assault, forcible confinement and two counts of breaching court orders.
Police have since laid additional charges alleging George entered Dakota Collegiate twice in November in the leadup to the incident at the nearby elementary school.
Chief financial officer Jamie Rudnicki said decision-makers in the Louis Riel School Division have sought to strike a balance in undertaking upgrades.
“Our schools are community schools and they need to be warm and welcoming places for our students, our staff and our community,” Rudnicki said. “But in the same breath, they have to be secure.”
The board of trustees was told the overhaul would be complete by the end of the summer break, at the earliest, during their last public briefing on the subject.
“There will be updates to the existing fob readers, new access-controlled doors and new video intercom systems that will be implemented, as well as the new video intercom consoles,” facilities manager Amarbeer Bhandari told the mid-February meeting.
That meeting heard the division had budgeted roughly $834,000, in addition to an $83,000 contingency fund, for the access upgrades.
Bhandari noted there was about $30,000 in one-time costs to purchase 41 tablets and kiosks for the new visitor-management system. The division’s annual Sign In Solutions subscription is about $45,000 (US$32,000), she added.
Four schools — Samuel Burland School, École Van Belleghem, Collège Béliveau and Nelson McIntyre Collegiate — piloted the new sign-in system in the winter. It became universal after spring break.
Hagan, who oversees IT initiatives, said there were between five and 10 daily entries, “a potpourri” of division staff and other visitors, during a pilot in one of the middle-sized buildings,.
The director said he hopes the new technology will give school staff “peace of mind” when they see an unfamiliar face and help administrators make sure everyone is accounted for during an evacuation.
Sign In Solutions was chosen based on how feature-rich and cost-effective it is, he said.
The division’s review of building security also involved assessing each school to determine how many controlled access points were required and staff fobs were needed.
