The school board will review and likely approve a policy allowing the use of surveillance video cameras on school grounds at its meeting 7 p.m. in the middle/high school cafeteria next week.

"The world has changed enough where incidents occur and if there’s no first hand reference" resolving an issue becomes a problem, said board president Anthony Scalici. "When you deal with one kid’s word against another ... that’s just ugly stuff. This puts the grand mediator in there."

According to a draft of the policy, cameras will "only be utilized in public areas where there is no �reasonable expectation of privacy’."

The cameras will not record sound and they will be located both inside and outside of the school.

"It’s not the �Big Brother is watching you’ thing, it’s really about watching other people who come into the school," said high school principal Gary Kuch.

He elaborated by saying that, while the cameras will serve as a deterrent to misbehavior by students, they are being put in place in part to monitor the school grounds for vandalism from tourists and other non-students who use the facility.

"It’s part of the whole safe schools things we’ve been looking at," he said. "The issue is the safety of our children, the safety of our staff."

Kuch said the district also learned that if a tourist or someone else vandalizes the school grounds during the summer, the district still has to report it to the state, which does not distinguish between acts committed by students or staff and others.

Cameras have been on school buses for a number of years and will continue to be allowed under the new policy, which replaces a policy solely covering bus surveillance.

Kuch said if the board approves the policy, a few cameras would likely be set up during the spring break in April after first notifying parents and placing appropriate signage around the school.

He said the only cost to the district would be the cameras themselves, as they can be plugged into the current infrastructure and stored as digital footage. Kuch did not know the cost of the cameras, but said they are fairly inexpensive.

He said the footage would only be held for a few days before being deleted.

No one will be sitting at a bank of monitors viewing what the cameras record throughout the day either, Kuch said.

According to the policy, "requests for viewing a video recording must be made in writing to the superintendent or his/her designee and, if the request is granted, such viewing must occur in the presence of the District’s designated custodian of the recording."

"Under no circumstances will the District’s video recording be duplicated and/or removed from District premises unless in accordance with a court order and/or subpoena."