Carroll County School District Scales for Future Growth with Hanwha Vision

Carroll County Schools, a regional school district in Carrollton, Kentucky, serves approximately 1,900 students, with a high school, an elementary school and a vocational center that are all located on one campus. Over the past several years, the district’s security needs have grown dramatically, driving the need for a new surveillance platform that was not only secure and intuitive, but also scalable to grow with the district.

The district worked with Everon, its long-time system integration partner, to replace its aging, surveillance platform with a unified Hanwha Vision solution powered by IP cameras and the WAVE Video Management System (VMS). An initial deployment of 40 cameras has expanded into a comprehensive surveillance system now approaching 400 devices, a mix of multi-sensor and fisheye cameras, complemented by the WAVE VMS.

The result is a modern, secure, and highly user-friendly system that has transformed how the district monitors its campus, supports school resource officers (SROs), and investigates incidents.

“We needed a system that could be used by a myriad of different users in the district, and would guarantee growth for the next 10 years,” said Zachary Morris-Dean, director of technology at Carroll County Schools. “We had simply outgrown the system we had.”

The district also realized it needed a flexible system that would maximize the school’s technology investment. The use of specialized cameras, such as dual-sensor cameras in «hallway mode» and 4K multi-sensors, allow for wider coverage of large areas like hallways and gymnasiums.

“The ability to turn those dual cameras into hallway mode to cover an entire hallway, that’s been great,” said Morris-Dean. “We also have a 4K multi-sensor camera in our middle school gym and that has allowed us to monitor the entire area of the gym.”

He described a key feature of the cameras, motion analytics, as a «game changer» for the ability to save time by highlighting only the video segments that show activity.

“The areas are highlighted where there is motion and that cuts down on the amount of time that we’re wasting looking at blank video,” Morris-Dean said.

WAVE for Centralized Remote Access

Carroll County chose the Hanwha Vision Wave VMS for centralized control, remote mobile access, and advanced features.

“The WAVE VMS is phenomenal,” said William Shipley, Solutions Integration Representative, Everon Solutions. “It gives us more control, plus the ability to delegate access across the entire district.”

Shipley added the district is using a server for each facility, with each tied together giving them the ability to use failover capabilities.

The team praised the new system for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of campus monitoring for both administrators and resource officers.

“WAVE has been super helpful for me in my job of making sure the district’s safe,” said Mark Wilhoite, Chief Operations Officer, and Director of People Personnel for Carroll County Schools. “I use it at my desktop, but I also use it at home, on the mobile app or just whenever I’m out in the district doing whatever job needs to be done. I can pull up WAVE and see what’s going on in the district at any point in real time.”

He added that the district’s resource officers “love the new system. We’ve gone from having the cameras on their laptops to now on mounted televisions with 20 to 30 camera views displayed at all times. They always know what’s going on across the campus.”

Morris-Dean described the Hanwha Vision system as an ideal match for future growth: “Hanwha Vision really adds to what the next chapter in video surveillance in our district is going to look like.”