Orange County schools had so many false alarms in the past five years that the school district racked up $78,000 in police fines and occasionally turned off school security systems.
The school district’s security company contends the alarms are triggered by janitors, teachers and work crews who enter schools during evenings, weekends and holidays without deactivating the security system.
“School personnel are unknowingly triggering the very alarms that are designed to protect them,” said William Ford, who manages the district’s longtime security company, Sonitrol of Orlando. He estimated that school workers were responsible for 78 percent of the false alarms.
During the Christmas holidays and spring break last year, the false-alarm problem became so severe that the district ordered the security company to shut off alarm systems in most schools.
School officials say they have no problems with their security company, but in a grant application district security director Rick Harris blamed the false alarms on Sonitrol. He stated the company errs on the side of caution by calling police too often.
For 18 years, Sonitrol has monitored Orange County schools but that may change soon. Today, the district will accept bids for a new security system that officials hope will minimize false alarms. Sonitrol and several other companies are expected to compete for the district’s security business.
The district now spends $534,000 annually for Sonitrol to monitor 160 schools. Because of tight budgets, Harris said, 12 schools have no private security.
The false-alarm fines are not as high as Harris once thought. When he requested a grant from the Orlando Police Department in October 2001, Harris initially stated that the fines totaled more than $300,000 over five years. He later changed the figure to “thousands of dollars.”
Since 1997, Orlando police have answered more than 1,300 false alarms at 34 schools, fining the district $50 to $100 for each of them. Many of the fines have not been paid.
The bills would be substantially higher if the Orange County Sheriff’s Office charged fines for nuisance alarms.
Schools with the most false alarms are: Jones High, 103; Washington Shores Elementary, 73; Edgewater High, 72; Catalina Elementary, 71; Boone High, 68.
Jones High School Principal Andrew Jenkins said his campus has been beleaguered by the alarms as the school undergoes a multiyear construction overhaul. The temporary portable classrooms on the campus have been more difficult to secure than regular school buildings, he said.
Unfortunately, Jenkins said, the fines come out of his operating budget.
Seminole County had a problem with nuisance alarms several years ago, said the school district’s security coordinator, Bob DeVecchio. Sonitrol monitors all of Seminole’s schools, and the company helped the district minimize false alarms by educating school staff members about going through only one door and staying out of buildings after a certain time of day.
“Now when a school does receive an alarm, in most cases police are going to know there was an issue there,” DeVecchio said.
