Greater Latrobe eyes elementary security camera upgrades

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

The board is looking to add a combined 86 cameras, two video recorder servers and supporting equipment at the Baggaley and Mountain View elementary campuses, based on cost quotes totaling $61,775 from VICON Industries of Hauppauge, N.Y. That price was obtained through a Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit cooperative purchasing program for technology called PEPPM, originally known as Pennsylvania Education Purchasing Program for Microcomputers.

If the board approves, cabling and installation of the cameras would be handled by CCL Technologies of Greensburg at a price of $58,304, available through Pennsylvania’s CoStars cooperative bidding program.

In a similar move in August, the school board approved purchase of new access-controlled security doors at the same two elementary buildings and also at the junior high, at a total cost of about $46,500.

The board is pursuing those security enhancements against the backdrop of a 242-page district capital improvement plan that extends through 2025 and recently was posted on the district website.

“That report was a couple years in the making,” said Kurt Thomas, Greater Latrobe’s director of facilities, operations and planning. “It’s a really complete in-depth look at where we stand. It gives us a plan in place of how we’re going to tackle deficiencies in the district as far as capital improvements.”

Informed by a walk-through and assessment of district sites, he said, the plan annually will identify and prioritize capital projects for consideration by the school board.

“It’s an evolving document,” he said. “It gives us kind of a blueprint of where to go. Ideally, this document is used as a road map for sustaining and enhancing the district’s learning environments.”

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

Greater Latrobe expects to use a consultant to complete a master planning and visioning process for district facilities. A preliminary energy audit of district buildings was completed in April by Siemens.