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CLEARFIELD — The Davis School District now has an around-the-clock monitoring center, where it can keep eyes on cameras and conditions across 120 buildings.
It's part of a major upgrade to security ahead of the new school year.
The building controls monitoring center was about the size of a closet years ago, but after upgrades, it's much more intricate.
How you respond in those first moments of an incident can leave a major impact on damage, injuries, and in the worst case, lost lives.
"We looked at Parkland a lot, Uvalde definitely. We've made adjustments to our procedures and functions since then as a district," said Justin Mott, who is in charge of the control center.
He said these are all things they have in mind when refining how things work here.
"We're always tweaking something. Nothing's like a hard-fast rule. We need to change and adapt," he added.
Someone will be in the center 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Mott said, "We have certain areas throughout the district where we know we have frequent problems, whether it be trespassing or vandalism that we keep an eye on."
Even maintenance problems can be detected and dispatched from the center.
Mott said, "We have a really good working relationship with all of our local law enforcement."
With eyes now district-wide, the district can use the center to help make calls on weather days.
"Whether it be wind or snow, we kind of monitor that here. We update our administration so they can make those decisions early," Mott added.
Monitors can shut down systems from here, even lock down buildings. It's something Mott said that will continue to improve just in case one of those worst-case scenarios ever happens here.
"We're working to coordinate and work with schools on drills, whether they be fire drills or lockdown drills, those kind of things, we're always preparing and practicing," he said.
All of the upgrades were done within the district with maintenance workers. The cost was about $50,000.
