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| Through the reporting capabilities of ISONAS software system, administration knows who has entered campus facilities and when |
Founded in 1976, the Calvary Road Christian School offers a complete, Christian education for children from 3 year old preschool age through 8th grade. CRCS is a ministry of Calvary Road Baptist Church and shares the Church facilities on six and one half acres in Virginia just 20 minutes from our nation’s capital. The school facilities include more than 20 classrooms, a middle school building, a gymnasium, a library, a computer lab, an athletic field, two kitchens and a well-equipped playground. By its willingness to sponsor the school, Calvary Road Baptist makes it possible to provide a Christian education not only for children from its own congregation, but for other children as well.
Safe and secure environment for learning
The school’s administration realises that part of the responsibility of providing a Christian education is to also provide a safe environment for learning. To that end in 2007 CRCS funded installation of an access control system from ISONAS Security Systems.
According to Jim Arthur who serves as IT Coordinator and also teaches computer science at the school, “We needed to replace the system of passing out multiple keys for access to the perimeter entry doors to our classroom facilities, admin offices and to our sanctuary. For safety reasons we also wanted to be able to know who enters our facilities and to provide easy-to-use and manage access privileges to approximately 80 faculty and staff members. We have been able to do all of these things and more with the ISONAS system.”
The school hired systems integrator Quantuum EP, from Ellicott City, MD to implement the system. “The school now has the ability to schedule times for the controlled access doors to be opened automatically as required during the school day on an individual door basis,” says Damon Tarquinio, President of Quantuum. “Through the use of the reporting capabilities of the ISONAS software system, school administration knows who has entered the campus facilities and can be assured that areas that have restricted access can be entered only by authorised staff and faculty.”
Windows-based ISONAS Crystal Matrix software
The original installation in 2007 was a single ISONAS reader controller proof of concept project at the main school entrance door. After a brief test period a total of 10 perimeter doors in various school facilities and in the main church sanctuary were installed. Management and monitoring of the entire system campus-wide is accomplished with the Windows-based Crystal Matrix software provided for free by ISONAS to CRCS.
Access has been provided to parents for pre-specified time periods during the school day for the building specific to their children’s class locations. This is accomplished through the assignment of parent-specific pin codes which are entered into the reader-controller’s key pad. “In this way we give parents access at the start and finish of the school day while maintaining a secure locked status at other times,” says Jim Arthur. “We can also allow temporary access at pre-specified times for meetings through the Crystal Matrix software. We now have good facility security as well as less cost and the better facility management that we expected from the ISONAS system.”
