FAIRMONT, W.Va. –– The Marion County school system will increase school safety measures with several new technology updates.
One update includes adding facial recognition technology entrances to nearly half of the schools in the county, according to Superintendent Donna Heston.
“[We received] a grant from the school building authority for 2.7 million dollars to undertake 9 safe school entrances often known as man traps in 9 of our 21 schools in Marion County,” she said on WAJR’s “Talk of the Town.”
Known as “safe school entrances,” the technology will provide additional safety for students and was highly encouraged by parents and community members.
It really is using this innovative technology to identify that individual at our doors and gain information about them before we let them inside, so that was a very appealing layer of protection for our Board of Education,” she said.
According to Heston, the technology coincides with several databases to keep administrators informed about visitors’ whereabouts and to prevent threatening individuals from entering the building.
One of those databases would obviously be the sex offender registry, but it also runs a database that we identify in our schools.
‘This is a volunteer. This is a parent. This is a staff member,” Heston said.
The technology alerts the school’s Police Resource Officer (PRO) or the appropriate administrator of potential threats posed by visitors in the building.
Marion County served as the first county in the state to implement this technology. Currently East Dale Elementary is the only school in the county with these technological upgrades.
The efforts were funded partially by a $2.7 million grant, and the entire project will cost approximately $3.6 million.
In addition to facial recognition technology, one school in the county is testing out a weapons detection system.
“We actually are piloting at one of our schools in Marion County weapons detection. It is through the same tech provider, Rank One [Computing], that we utilize our facial recognition for, and it does do weapons detection,” she said.
Heston said the county intends to continue increasing security measures at their schools partially through grants written with the assistance of Homeland Security.
She said the county received a grant from former Sen. Joe Manchin’s office to install a safe school entrance at East Fairmont Middle School, and they are in the process of submitting a grant to the West Virginia Department of Education for an additional entrance.
Heston said the assistance of several offices in Marion County is “vital” to school safety.
“We have been absolutely blessed in Marion County to have those collaborations not just from one municipality but one law enforcement agency,” she said.
Story by Savannah Jones