How Sycamore High School Went From Stalled Footage to Searchable Video
Stalled, offline footage replaced with reliable recordings
Search by what someone wore, not by scrubbing timestamps
Path tracking follows movement across cameras
The Sycamore High School story
Years of Stalled Footage, and a System Staff Had Outgrown
Sycamore High School is a public high school where Steven Balster, Assistant Principal, has spent nearly two decades. His responsibilities span student discipline, school culture, and staff evaluations, so visibility isn’t optional — it’s essential.
The school’s previous camera system didn’t deliver it. In Balster’s words, “It was very ineffective.” The platform routinely stalled, went offline, and made it difficult to locate critical moments when they mattered most. “It stalled out a lot. It bogged us down,” he said. “It didn’t record for very long… a lot of it went offline.”
When incidents occurred, even basic review was painful. Searching footage took too long, recordings were limited, and investigations often slowed before they could start. “It took forever to try to find what we were looking for,” Balster said. There was no single breaking-point incident — the frustration accumulated year after year. “We probably should have done this years ago.”
The Solution
A Long-Overdue Upgrade, Installed Mid-Year
Coram was installed mid–school year, around the winter break, with the dean of students leading much of the early setup. Almost immediately, the difference was clear — clear enough that the team showed staff, and even some students, what the school could now see. “And so it’s been vital,” Balster said.
Coram stood out for a few specific reasons:
- Clear, high-quality video: Usable recordings without the slowdowns and dropouts of the old platform
- Attribute-based search: Find a person by what they were wearing — a ‘green shirt’ — instead of scrubbing footage
- Path tracking: Follow movement across cameras to reconstruct what happened
- Reliable performance: A system staff can depend on compared with the legacy platform
- Service-oriented onboarding: “It’s been very positive, and very customer service-oriented,” Balster said
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The Benefits
Faster Answers, Clearer Context
Compared to the old system, Coram delivered what staff had been missing: speed, clarity, and usable search. The school initially prioritized video clarity and system performance — “Our biggest thing was just clarity… and speed of recognition and just not being bogged down,” Balster explained — and advanced search quickly became indispensable on top of that.
What Sycamore Is Doing with Coram
- Finding what they’re looking for, fast: Attribute-based search replaces long reviews and guesswork with direct answers.
- Following a person across cameras: Path tracking turns a multi-camera incident into one clear sequence.
- Relying on the recordings: Consistent access and usable footage instead of stalls, gaps, and downtime.
- Supporting discipline and investigations: Administrators can see, understand, and respond when it matters most.
Asked to describe Coram to others in education, Balster didn’t hesitate. “A+,” he said. “Everything so far has been excellent.” For Sycamore High School, Coram didn’t just replace an outdated system — it restored confidence in the school’s ability to see, understand, and respond when it matters most.
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When you can follow somebody, make that path, when you can say, you know, ‘green shirt,’ those specific things—it’s so time-efficient compared to what we’re used to.
Until you see it and use it, that’s when you know: this is awesome.
