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| The Appletree School installed Brivo ACS on the front door and assigned PIN codes to parents and teachers |
The situation
The Appletree School was founded as a private school in 1979 to serve the community’s preschool and kindergarten children, offering a soun curriculum presented in a unique, departmentalised style. Word spread of the wonderful care and education students received at the school and they soon had a long waiting list. Over time, Appletree has expanded their curriculum to enroll 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade students as well.
The Appletree School is located in suburban Virginia, with close proximity to the Washington, DC, Metro system. While the location provides convenient access for parents, children, and teachers, it also poses some interesting concerns with respect to access to the school building. “Since we are very close to the Vienna Metro stop, we used to have people wandering in off the street. We even had people recently released from jail coming in looking for the Metro station,” said Appletree’s Beckii Pittman.
The challenge
The Appletree School keeps their doors locked from the outside, except for the front entrance which is normally staffed by the school nurse. However, the nurse has other duties as well and can’t always monitor the main entrance. Appletree also wanted to provide easy-to-administrate access after hours and during holidays for teachers and staff. The school had a limited budget and possessed only minimal technical resources to administer an electronic access control solution.
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| Brivo’s Web-based administration enables users to log in from home to monitor activity and manage access |
The solution
In an effort to increase the personal safety of teachers, students, and parents, Pittman began researching options. A colleague at another Appletree location highly recommended the Brivo Access Control System (ACS). Baldino’s Electronic Security was chosen to install and service the Brivo ACS based on their successful installation and servicing of Pittman’s colleague’s system. The Appletree School installed Brivo ACS on the front door and assigned PIN codes to parents and teachers.
Appletree administrators have benefited from Brivo’s Web-based administration capabilities by being able to log onto their account from home to monitor activity and manage access. Such access and ease-of-use has been especially helpful on days when the school is closed due to inclement weather. Also, user credentials can be set to specific schedules, allowing tremendous access control flexibility. Pittman gives the Brivo system an A+: “The parents are very pleased (with Brivo ACS) — it has given them peace of mind. I can access the system from my home computer on snow days. We really do like that.”
The highlights
- Most important: parents and teachers have much greater “peace of mind” from a value-added service that has proven to increase school safety.
- Remote administration of the entire system from any Web browser anytime, anywhere in the world.
- Teacher and staff productivity have increased by allowing easy, managed access to the school during off-hours, weekends, and holidays.
- Brivo manages all IT maintenance of the system — eliminating the need for expensive IT resources or extensive technical expertise.
- Appletree staff can log in and manage the school’s doors from a home computer, preventing the doors from unlocking when there are inclement weather conditions and school has been cancelled.
- Total Cost of Ownership for a Brivo ACS is up to 50% less than traditional PC-based electronic access control systems. Such lower up-front system and installation costs enable the school to keep working capital focused where it should be: on the students.
