Security cameras have been a mainstay in K-12 schools for decades. But how well do they really work at keeping kids, staff, and school property safe, especially in the age of AI?
The effectiveness of security camera systems are often compromised by lack of investment, said Kenneth Trump, a school security expert and president of National School Safety and Security Services. Cameras can fall into disrepair without dedicated funding for maintenance, and school staff don’t usually receive meaningful training on how to use the systems.
And if not deployed smartly, cameras can undermine school climate and student and staff relationships, which are far more important to school safety, experts say.
“Oftentimes, it’s the less visible or invisible measures that are most impactful: the relationships with kids, the prevention efforts, the social-emotional and mental health supports with kids, the communications, the training of school staff,” Trump said.
He added that “those are all things that are so powerful if you do them properly, but they are not things that you can just point to that meets the emotional security needs of the school community,” which wants to see more tangible examples of campus security like cameras and metal detectors.
School and district leaders must be particularly thoughtful about the purpose and goals of their surveillance systems and how they might affect school climate as the capabilities of cameras change with artificial intelligence, experts say.
AI is poised to change the functionality of cameras, said Ben Fisher, an associate professor of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fisher’s research focuses on school policing, discipline, and security with a focus on racial equity.
“How security cameras have been traditionally used has been in a forensic way, like something happens and you go to the cameras to see what happened,” he said. “But with some of these AI software plug-ins that are attached to these cameras, they are meant to detect things live that are happening. Things are shifting as we speak toward this … real-time detection use that I don’t think we fully understand the implications of yet.”
A major concern with any technology powered by or enhanced by AI is that bias in the AI training data will to lead to bias in how the technology operates. For example, AI facial recognition programs are less accurate in identifying people of color and women than white men.
Where do schools place security cameras, and who are they watching?
The most popular areas to place security cameras are outside the school building and in hallways and entry areas, according to a survey of teachers, principals, and district leaders conducted May 28 to July 1 by the EdWeek Research Center. Other high-traffic areas like gymnasiums, auditoriums, and cafeterias are also popular locations for security cameras.
But who are these cameras set up to watch? In each location, the majority of survey participants said cameras in their school or district are used to monitor both students and employees.
Survey respondents said in an open-ended question that cameras in their schools are set up to watch adults as much as the students.
“Some [administrators] have used video cameras to watch teachers and reprimand—as a result, the use of cameras as a means of monitoring for ‘safety purposes’ has been added to the teacher contract,” said an elementary school teacher in California.
“One of the primary uses of cameras outside is to monitor who is trying to get into the building (not staff or students)—e.g. parents, ICE, etc,” said a middle school teacher in Wisconsin.
In terms of the most optimal camera placement, there are no hard and fast rules, said Trump. Every school has a unique design and needs. The best strategy is to lean heavily on the insights and expertise of the school’s staff in determining where cameras should go.
But just as important as effective placement is making sure there are resources dedicated to training and ongoing maintenance, said Trump. School staff often don’t receive the training they need on how to use the camera systems.
Sometimes, cameras and monitors are labeled and positioned in ways that make it difficult for staff to follow students from one area to another or to even identify what area of the school they’re looking at. Trump said he frequently hears from school administrators that cameras are broken, blurry, or pointed at an object such as a wall.
“Earlier in the school year, I was in 40-some schools in a district, and the most common concern from administrators across the district was the age of the camera system, and the fact that in many cases, they needed to just be repositioned to be pointed in the right direction and relocated to areas where the need was greater, where kids were congregating,” he said.
A superintendent in Arizona responded to an open-ended question on the EdWeek Research Center survey that the state prioritizes other security measures over upkeep.
“We need funding for upgraded camera systems, entry control and threat identification and mitigation,” the superintendent said. “But security funding in this state is funneled first to [school resource officers], which consumes all of the funding and leaves us without the systems that actually work.”
Investing in relationships remains an important safety strategy
More important than cameras to school safety and security is a positive school climate where students have trusting relationships with the adults in the building, said Trump and Fisher.
It’s usually better to have school staff monitoring students by being visible and interacting with them, versus watching them from a screen behind a closed door, said Trump.
While there isn’t any research showing that cameras in and of themselves erode a schools’ climate, they can be used in ways that negatively affect school climate, said Fisher. For example, school administrators or school resource officers who use cameras to constantly police students’ actions could undermine students’ sense of belonging and trust in the school staff.
“If cameras are used in a more inclusive way, where everything is sort of clear about when and why and how they’re used, and they’re just used in those forensic cases, then I don’t think we have the negative impacts on school climate,” Fisher said. “I talked to a staff member who gave the example of a student who had misplaced their textbook, and they were able to go back in the cameras and see, here is the last time he had the textbook, and find it.”
Fisher isn’t aware of research specifically on how transparency around school surveillance systems, or how they’re framed in discussions with students and parents, affect school climate.
But he said that being open about when students are being recorded, for what reasons, and how long recordings are stored could improve students’ and parents’ trust in schools.
“Being open and transparent gives students more of a sense of procedurally, ‘here is what happens, and I don’t have to imagine all the nefarious ways this could be used against me,’” he said.
5 key steps for effective use of security cameras
There are several steps schools can take to make sure they’re reaping the potential benefits of their cameras, while avoiding some of the drawbacks, according to Trump and Fisher.
- Districts should perform regular audits of security cameras in schools to make sure they are functioning properly, Trump said.
- Districts should dedicate funding in their budgets to perform upkeep on their camera systems, Trump said, even if the original system was paid for by a one-time grant or funding stream.
- Principals, school resource officers, and other school staff need dedicated training time with a vendor to learn about how to use the system, Trump said.
- Schools should communicate clear rules and expectations to students and parents about how and why video cameras are used in the school, Fisher said. This can also help set reasonable expectations for parents about what kind of information schools can provide following an incident, Trump said.
- Schools should see cameras as a technology to help students, not just police them, Fisher said.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
