4 Proactive Features VAMS Uses for School Security

Parents and guardians need that unspoken assurance that their children study safe and sound within the confines of school property.

They want to know that administrators are investing sufficient thought—and funds—into student safety. Usually, this will include all-round implementation of access control, security, and general visitor management technology.

Knowledge of this keeps them even-keeled as they navigate the unpredictability of their own daily schedules, and they enjoy fixed expectations of that protective layer over their wards.

As school administrators, your strategy to assure these guardians of school safety should require you giving them a thorough explanation of how your visitor management system works. In case you choose VAMS, we have mapped out 4 features of our system that spreads a net around possible antisocial and unhealthy elements in the vicinity:

1. National Sex Offender Screening for all Visitors & Contractors

At entry, after providing government-issued photo IDs, driver’s licenses, or green cards, the VAMS visitor management cross-checks your details with the national database of registered sex offenders. Only once that hurdle is passed will you be verified as an appropriate visitor for entry.

This will filter the human flow into the school premises, ranging from all categories of visitors, from faculty to temporary contractors like a retrofitting crew or HVAC servicemen. We are aware that this may cause some slight inconvenience for your visitors, but the time it takes to collect and store these essential details is not as tedious as it would take through manual, paper entry. Together, we can increase safety for students and staff!

2. Temperature and Mask Compliance Screening for all Users

In the last 18 months, schools have been going through a cycle of closing and reopening in order to resist the COVID-19 virus. As the new normal develops, schools will need to look into methods that screen all their visitors, faculty, and students. Access control infrastructure in the form of face and body temperature scanning devices will be required, and our VAMS visitor management system integrates those devices into a seamless, digital whole.

Even after the pandemic subsides, there will always remain the possibility for outbreaks in a crowded setting of a school. To perpetuate the sense of safety into the distant future, schools should require their visitors to comply with having their facemasks and temperature scanned before they enter. Public health wins!

3. Creates a Preset List for Student Pick-ups After Custodial Rights are Confirmed

All parents want a guarantee that the only individuals authorized to pick up their children at school are themselves. They would want to eliminate any possibility that an unknown individual does so. To that purpose, schools can initially confirm each parent’s custodial rights to create a digital list of sanctioned individuals for student pick-ups.

Once this list is stored on the VAMS visitor information system, the integration is seamless, and, henceforth, only the sanctioned individual (i.e. parent, in most cases) will be able to enter the school premises to then wait at the pick-up point. Should there be any need for a temporary custodian, such as a relative or babysitter, the parent can preemptively introduce the custodian to the school to create a temporary pass for them.

4. Emergency SOS Button to Alert Administration

Any situations needing immediate alerts—such as a sudden natural calamity (heavy snowfall, hail, tornadoes, etc.), sports-related accidents, an intruder, or a state-wide military emergency—can be helped with the prompt alerting feature on the VAMS visitor management system. This will give faculty, students, and other visitors time to mobilize and evacuate, if need be. It could also alert parents’ smartphones so that they can make a quick trip to pick up their children from the school premises.

In case funding causes you to think twice about adopting such a system, know that schools are eligible to a variety of grant and funding programs for on-site security and constructions, including the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021, and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act.

Make the most of our expertise to keep the next generation of geniuses safe and sound!