Mineola School District Superintendent Michael Nagler revealed first to the Mineola American that Intralogic Solutions would handle security enhancements at the five school buildings. Bay Shore-based A+ Technologies was the other competing bidder.
Mineola will pay Intralogic $100,000, according to district officials. The district will use $75,000 from the facilities line in the district budget and $25,000 from grants awarded from Senator Jack Martins’ office.
Intralogic built the command center at Nassau BOCES and Nagler said the Massapequa-based security company was a better fit for the district. Since the Sandy Hook incident, Intralogic has done between 70 and 80 school district assessments.
The company offered free assessments to districts. CEO Lee Mandel said they usually cost between $10,000-$15,000.
Intralogic did a Technical Threat Vulnerability Assessment (TTVA) in Mineola on Jan. 31. TTVA’s check perimeter of facilities, checks door security and visitor policy and procedures, according to Mandel.
“This contract was a very important one for us because Mineola is a very technical school district,” Mandel said. ‘This is definitely going to give us an opportunity to utilize all our technology together. We’re doing every possible piece of technology that Intralogic offers.”
Mandel feels the TTVA assisted Intralogic in securing the deal. It gave Intralogic a sense of what the district currently utilizes for security measures.
“The biggest thing was how we can utilize all the existing equipment they have, and enhance it without having to replace it.
Possible security components could include additional security cameras, door-ajar notification, panic buttons, card access doors and so-called man traps.
A lot of companies talked about ripping things out and replacing things,” said Mandel. “We’re totally against that. What [Mineola] has is really good and by adding simple enhancements, it’ll be like a brand new simple.”
Man traps are, according to Nagler, enclosed vestibules that visitors pass through when entering schools. Visitors’ identification would be checked and their destination verified by a security officer before they could enter the premises.
Mineola High School will have man traps installed by June with Mineola Middle School, Jackson Avenue and Meadow Drive School receiving the vestibules in the summer. According to Nagler, the toughest enhancement will occur at Hampton Street School.
“It’s the most involved,” said Nagler. “We’re working with our architects for the best option on that.”
The BOCES command center, which held its grand opening at the Robert E. Lupinskie Center in Westbury last week, will eventually connect all school district security operations. Mandel and Nagler said the center would eventually connect with the Nassau County Police Department. Nagler held briefings with the police department on security concerns.
“A+ [Technologies] presented, primarily, an IP system. Intralogic is reusing our existing analog cameras,” said Nagler. In that respect, they’re two different systems.”
The Willis Avenue School will serve as the command center of the district. One monitor will be dedicated to each of the five school buildings.
“We’ll be taking the camera system as the primary component and the access control system, which is the door-swipe control and the door-ajar notification system to tie that in with an electronic map to a command center,” Mandel stated. “From one room in the building, they’ll be able to access all that technology together and push that out to first responders in the event there’s a lockdown or shooting.”
Should a panic button be hit, it will notify the police immediately, Nagler said.
“[The command center] will deal with all the cameras and get all the alerts in the buildings,” Nagler stated. “At this point, there won’t be someone watching the cameras all the time. It’s a more of a passive system that you’re going to if something occurs. If you want to have it monitored, we would go through BOCES [command center] to do that. These systems will both tie into BOCES and can be monitored there.”
