As a key player in security for a large school district, Emily Bowers can’t be everywhere, all at once. However, thanks to Clarksville-Montgomery County School System’s Security Operations Center, she can at least lay eyes on every school in the county in real-time.
“It’s a huge responsibility to make sure all of these kids are safe every single day,” said Bowers, Safety and Health Specialist for CMCSS. “We are over 40,000 students, we have over 5,500 staff members and so we take our jobs very seriously.”
Monday, I was given rare access inside CMCSS’s Security Operations Center. Other than the district asking us to not disclose where their security center is located, we were given full access. When you walk in, you can immediately see a giant wall of 68 monitors where where leaders can pull up any of their 4,000 cameras at each elementary, middle and high school.
“We’re able to utilize this as an incident command center anytime we have emergencies occur,” said Bowers. “We can zoom all the way to get license plates or whatever we may need.”