SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — While students, teachers and parents are gearing up for the new school year in Utah, administrators are also reviewing procedures for things many people never considered a generation or two ago.
Now it‘s reading, writing, arithmetic and… school safety.
Summit County School District officials say they now have a new, and less intrusive tool to keep their schools safe.
“It’s just one more layer in our security platform,” said district CEO Mike Tanner.
The district is looking at several security options before settling on one called "Zero Eyes."
“The Zero Eyes system uses artificial intelligence to look through our existing camera system here, we didn’t have to put any new cameras up. And it looks only for one thing, that one thing is unholstered firearms,” he explained.
The system has been in operation since the second half of last school year, but this will be the first full school year it will be utilized. There are roughly 650 cameras throughout Summit County School District buildings.
According to Tanner, one of the most attractive features is that it’s a 24/7 system. Whether it’s inside the school, the parking lot or wherever security cameras are already located, "Zero Eyes" is always working.
If someone is spotted carrying or brandishing a gun, a signal is sent to an operations center in Hawaii, which immediately determines whether the threat is real.
“It’s a detection platform, it’s not a surveillance platform," added Tanner, "it’s not intrusive, it doesn’t keep images of children. All it does is look through those cameras and look for weapons all day long.”
If a weapon is detected, an integrated system called Aegix notifies school officials and local law enforcement within seconds.
“The biggest challenge in an incident is whether or not people are informed and informed correctly," shared Michael Huff, Chief Technology Officer with Aegix Global. "We don’t want them going to TikTok figuring out what’s going on, and that happens a lot.”
Tanner hopes "Zero Eyes" is never needed and that teachers, staff and students never know it’s there.
“We want to create an inviting, educational environment that’s secure, but we don’t want the security to impact the education," said Tanner, "and when you got kids walking through a metal detector, I think that sends a big signal to school."
