A K-12 charter school serving approximately 450 students and 65 staff across a single campus in the New York Metro Area — operating under state safety requirements, parent privacy expectations, and an administration facing increasing pressure to address vaping incidents in spaces where traditional security measures cannot go.
Students protected
Cameras deployed
Triton Sensors installed
Campus bathrooms & entry points secured
The Challenge
The school’s administration had two converging problems and no good solution for either. The first was straightforward: their campus security infrastructure was outdated. The camera system was analog, recording to an aging DVR with no remote access and footage that wasn’t reliable enough to use as evidence. Entry to the building relied on a single buzzer at the front door and keyed locks everywhere else — no audit trail, no credential management, and no way to know who was in the building after hours.
The second problem was harder. Vaping incidents in student bathrooms had become a consistent issue. The administration knew it was happening. Parents knew it was happening. And the school had no detection capability in the one part of the building where it was most prevalent — because bathrooms are exactly where cameras cannot go, legally or ethically.
Traditional security vendors proposed camera systems for the hallways and common areas but had no answer for the bathroom problem. The school’s previous IT vendor managed workstations and the school’s network but had never been involved in physical security. Once again, multiple vendors meant no one owned the full picture.
The head of school came to Solved IT with a direct ask: build a campus security environment that covers everything — including the spaces cameras can’t reach — and do it in a way that parents, students, and staff can all feel good about.
What Solved IT Did
Solved IT began with a full campus assessment — walking every building, mapping every entry point, identifying camera coverage gaps, reviewing the existing network infrastructure, and evaluating the specific spaces where Triton Sensors could address what cameras could not. Within two weeks, the school had a complete security plan covering every layer of the campus environment. Then we built it.
Video Surveillance — Verkada Enterprise IP Cameras We replaced the analog DVR system with a 28-camera Verkada enterprise IP deployment covering all building entrances and exits, hallways, common areas, the gymnasium, the cafeteria, the parking lot, and all exterior perimeter points. Every camera feeds into Verkada’s encrypted cloud platform — accessible remotely by the head of school and designated administrators from any device, with footage retained on Verkada’s cloud storage and no on-premise DVR to fail or be tampered with. The system produces audit-quality footage that can be used by administration, law enforcement, or legal counsel when incidents require documentation.
Triton Sensors — Vaping & Threat Detection in Private Spaces Six Triton Sensors were installed in student bathrooms and other privacy-sensitive spaces across the campus — the exact locations where cameras are not permitted and where vaping incidents had been occurring. Triton detects vaping, THC, smoke, gunshots, glass break, aggressive keyword patterns, and loitering — providing real-time alerts to designated administrators when a detection event occurs. No cameras. No audio recording. No collection of personally identifiable information. Triton’s SOC 2 Type II certification made it a defensible, privacy-compliant choice that the school could explain clearly to parents, students, and the board.
Within the first 30 days of deployment, the sensors detected 34 vaping events — providing the administration with timestamped, location-specific evidence that both confirmed the scope of the problem and enabled specific disciplinary action. The deterrence effect was measurable: incident frequency declined significantly once the student body understood the sensors were in place.
Access Control — Brivo Cloud-Managed Entry We installed Brivo cloud-managed access control across all 12 campus entry points — replacing keyed locks and the single front-door buzzer with a credential-based system that gives the administration complete control over who can access which parts of the building, when. Staff credentials are enrolled and revoked centrally. Contractors and visitors receive temporary access credentials with defined time windows. After-hours access to specific areas — the gymnasium for evening events, the administrative wing for staff working late — is managed without distributing physical keys that can be copied or lost. Every entry event is logged with credential, timestamp, and location.
Network Infrastructure & VLAN Segmentation The school’s existing network was a single flat network shared by administrative systems, student devices, and the building’s operational infrastructure. We redesigned the network architecture to segment student, staff, administrative, and physical security traffic onto separate VLANs — ensuring that student devices cannot reach administrative systems, that the camera and sensor network is isolated from the data network, and that guest Wi-Fi for school events is completely separated from both. The Triton Sensors and Verkada cameras operate on their own dedicated network segment, hardened against tampering.
Structured Cabling The camera, access control, and sensor deployment required 31 new PoE cable runs across the campus. Our BICSI-certified installation team completed all cabling across two weekend windows — routed through ceiling pathways, fully labeled and documented, with no visible surface runs in student or common areas. The installation produced a complete cabling documentation package that becomes part of the school’s facilities records.
Managed IT Solved IT assumed managed IT responsibility for the school’s administrative environment — staff workstations, the school’s Microsoft 365 deployment, and the physical security platform — under a single flat-rate engagement. The head of school now has one call to make when anything technology-related needs attention, whether it’s a staff workstation issue, a camera that needs review, or a Triton alert requiring follow-up.
The Results
- 100% of campus entry points secured — all 12 access points transitioned from keyed entry to Brivo credential-based access with complete audit logging; physical key inventory eliminated
- 28-camera IP system replaced aging analog DVR — cloud-managed, remotely accessible, encrypted retention; footage quality sufficient for administrative, law enforcement, and legal use
- Vaping incidents detected and addressed within 30 days of deployment — Triton Sensors identified 43 events in the first month, providing timestamped evidence that enabled specific administrative action and measurable deterrence going forward
- Network segmented across student, staff, admin, and security VLANs — administrative and physical security infrastructure isolated from student devices and guest traffic
- Privacy-compliant detection in bathrooms and private spaces — no cameras, no audio recording, no PII collection; SOC 2 Type II certified technology that administration can explain clearly to parents and board
- Single partner for IT and campus security — managed IT, cameras, access control, sensors, and network all under one Solved IT engagement with one point of contact
