During Fall Break, 21 high-definition surveillance cameras were installed around the school campus, increasing the number of surveillance cameras to 49 total.
While not officially mentioned in any e-notes or HIDOE messages, Vice Principal Andrew Szkotak announced the installation of said cameras during the senior town hall in August. Despite this, little is known about the reasons for installing the cameras.
The cameras can be found all over campus, including inside and outside the cafeteria, around the perimeter of the library, and in the stairwells in A & C building.
Across several interviews with students and teachers on campus, most interviewees accepted the installation of cameras, with the general consensus being that it would improve safety around campus. However, lots of students stated they were not sure about the cameras, because they didn’t even know about them in the first place and felt they were being left in the dark about how the cameras would impact the school.
An interview with Mr. Viernes, the Vice Principal and Head of Security, answered all of the questions students have been asking. The cameras were installed to provide more coverage to the preexisting 28 surveillance cameras, in more secluded locations, namely the stairwells in the A and C buildings.
The cameras were paid for by the state, and installed by a state contracted local company. The allocated budget for the project was $64,000, with each individual installation being about $3,000.
Upon researching local security companies in Honolulu, it was found that Cam Security Inc. is the company that carries the camera model seen on campus. It’s known as the “4k Outdoor Bullet Camera” (a Bullet Cam is a long-range CCTV cam), and has a wide variety of features ranging from infrared night vision to controllable framerate. These cameras can have up to a 1700 TVL rating (TVL is the measure of the CCTV’s resolution by monitor or camera), 8MP of resolution, and a large image size of 3840×2160, meaning it should be able to capture details like a standard 4k camera.
However, depending on what settings the camera is set to, the resolution can be lowered. If the frame rate of the camera is changed, that changes the resolution too. At 15fps or 20fps, the video resolution will be 8MP or 4k, but at 30 fps it will be 4MP or 2k. The quality of the video resolution is also dependent on the monitor which receives the footage: if it’s a lower quality monitor, it would lower the video quality.
According to Mr. Viernes, the footage can be viewed by the school administration and security department.
These new angled bullet cameras, along with the original Meraki-brand 360° cameras, are definitely increasing the coverage of surveillance throughout the campus, but some students doubt this is a necessary project for the school.
During interviews, some students felt that if something were to be installed, it would be more preferable to have new A/C units or the like. When asked about the potential of new utilities, Mr. Viernes revealed that projects for new A/C units and water fountains were in development.
However, those projects were recently halted. Money from those projects is being reallocated to the funding of the rebuilding of Maui schools that were destroyed in the fires. It will be a while before those projects are resumed.
