Vice Principal Cathy Peterson is always watching.
You may not realize that there are about 200 different angles of security cameras around the campus that are on all day, every day. They are helpful with identifying people who shouldn't be on our campus, but also make for some funny stories.
Peterson is always making sure we are safe on campus, starting when she gets to school at 6:30 a.m.
“I go through and make sure everything is safe and if I need to, I go out and say you need to go,” Peterson said. “A little scary, but that's what I do.”
All the cameras are organized by wings and sections.
Peterson goes through all of them, then she goes to what she calls the “hot spots” like the restrooms. She explains how she has a routine when it comes to checking the cameras.
Anywhere she sees movement she immediately goes to that camera.
She says, “That's why it drives us nuts to see there's somebody upstairs. If I see movement, then I go there.”
While Peterson uses the cameras for safety reasons, there are also other benefits from watching them. She got to watch the whole process of the gym floor being re-done.
“I was able to watch every facet of the redo of the gym, and it was so cool just to watch,” Peterson said. She wants principal Chris Roberts to take all the clips from the gym, put them together and make a cool time-lapse of the process of the floor being redone.
There are also fun times while watching the cameras, there are also scary ones. One story Peterson shared was about a drunk young man.
“He drove through and broke the metal bar, went through the gate and the pool cover was on, and had he gotten out he would have drowned because the pool covers would have kept him down,” Peterson said.
Scary incidents like that can happen and without the cameras, we wouldn't have known what actually happened. This incident was about three or four years ago and happened during the weekend. “They called me and I shot down here. I said don't touch anything, make sure he's safe,” Peterson said.
While that was scary there were also funny stories.
Peterson saw some kids who were holding a sign up and goofing around, so she went behind them and said, “What are we doing?”
The kids now believed she really did watch the cameras all the time.
The cameras can go back up to 60 days, and they are so clear you can't deny what you see. Some kids would deny what they did, but Peterson would bring up the footage and they would say, “Okay, yeah I did that”.
With the new solar being put in there are some new plans to make sure cars and belongings are still safe. Peterson plans to put cameras under the solar panels so she has a better view and our cars are more secure.