At a glance
Glendale Union High School District serves more than 15,000 students across the Metropolitan Phoenix region. As a high school district with multiple campuses, GUHSD is responsible for protecting students, staff, facilities, and critical district assets while maintaining strong controls around privacy and access to security footage.
Before Verkada, GUHSD faced a familiar challenge for growing school systems: disconnected camera systems, manual locks, inconsistent access control, and limited visibility into who could access campuses and footage. Today, the district is using Verkada to bring cameras, access control, and environmental monitoring into one centralized platform.
Key results include:
Standardized security operations across the district, replacing a fragmented environment of 30–40 independent camera systems
Improved access control through centralized door schedules, remote unlocks, and keycard-based access
Reduced exposure from lost physical keys by limiting the cost, complexity, and operational disruption associated with rekeying campus doors
More self-service investigations for deans, principals, and administrators
Better privacy and audit controls over who can view, download, and share footage
After-hours person detection alerts that help campuses identify potential trespassing
Server room heat alerts to help protect millions of dollars in critical IT infrastructure
“Verkada gives us visibility and control we simply didn’t have before. We can see who has access to our campuses, understand when doors are being used, and take action from one centralized platform.”
— Trenten Graham, Director of Network Systems, Glendale Union High School District
Moving from fragmented systems to a districtwide standard
For Trenten Graham, Director of Network Systems at Glendale Union High School District, campus safety has always depended on three things: visibility, control, and preparedness.
Before Verkada, those goals were difficult to achieve consistently. GUHSD relied heavily on manual locks, which made it challenging to secure buildings quickly in an emergency. A lockdown required coordination across multiple people, buildings, and procedures at a time when every second mattered.
“It was a very manual process,” Graham said. “We wanted to make sure we were protected from unauthorized access or activity and limit our exposure across our campuses.”
The district’s camera environment had also become difficult to govern. Across GUHSD, Graham estimates there were 30 to 40 independent camera systems. Some had been installed for clubs, activities, or individual campus needs, but over time, that created a patchwork of systems with inconsistent visibility, access controls, and oversight.
From an IT and governance standpoint, that fragmentation made it difficult to maintain consistent standards across the district. GUHSD needed a clearer way to manage camera systems across campuses while giving the right teams access to the footage they needed.
“Verkada gave us a districtwide standard — one that helps us maintain oversight while still giving administrators the tools they need to respond,” Graham said.
Starting with cameras, then expanding into access control
GUHSD’s journey with Verkada began with video security. The district evaluated multiple vendors and ultimately chose Verkada because of the product experience, ease of use, and support the team received.
The initial rollout was modest: a few cameras, deployed as a new district standard. From there, the strategy became clear. If a campus or program needed a camera, the answer was Verkada.
Today, GUHSD has approximately 610 cameras deployed and is continuing to expand its Verkada footprint across campuses. The district also uses Verkada Access Control on doors and gates, including gyms and other high-value areas, as well as air quality sensors in server rooms to monitor environmental conditions.
For Graham, the biggest benefit is not simply adding more devices — it’s having one district-managed platform instead of a patchwork of disconnected tools.
“There is absolutely no way we would be able to control, manage, improve, create awareness, and educate staff if we were using multiple different cameras from multiple different vendors,” Graham said.
Reducing the cost and risk of physical keys
Access control has been especially valuable for GUHSD because of the cost and risk associated with physical keys.
At Sunnyslope High School, where GUHSD has completed a full access control implementation, Verkada has helped the district move away from manual key management. Instead of relying on physical keys that can be lost, copied, or passed around, administrators can manage access through keycards, door schedules, and remote unlocks.
That change has both operational and security benefits. Campus teams can unlock doors on a schedule, lock doors remotely during breaks, or grant a vendor access without handing over a physical key.
The financial implications can be significant. When physical keys are lost, school districts can face substantial rekeying costs across doors, buildings, gyms, auditoriums, and other campus facilities. By moving more doors to Verkada Access Control, GUHSD can reduce its reliance on physical keys and manage access more centrally.
Gyms are a particularly important use case. They often hold expensive equipment and see frequent turnover among coaches and staff who need access. With Verkada, GUHSD can better control who enters, when they enter, and whether that access is appropriate.
Giving administrators the tools to investigate faster
Day to day, Verkada is used by teams across GUHSD. IT manages installation, uptime, and device configuration, while deans, administrators, principals, facilities teams, principal secretaries, and district office staff use the platform for investigations and access management.
That self-service model is key. With multiple campuses and thousands of students and staff, Graham’s team cannot be the first stop for every investigation. Verkada allows authorized campus administrators to review footage, understand what happened, and resolve incidents without constantly escalating to IT.
“The product is intuitive enough that they feel like they can navigate it and do it themselves,” Graham said. “For us, that is huge.”
GUHSD also takes a careful approach to privacy and permissions. Local campus technology assistants do not have access to Verkada. Instead, access is reserved for administrators and trained users who understand the sensitivity of student footage and the importance of using video only when needed.
That balance — ease of use for authorized users, combined with strong controls around who can access footage — has helped GUHSD expand video security without sacrificing governance.
Resolving incidents with objective evidence
Across campuses, Verkada has helped GUHSD move from anecdotal accounts to objective evidence.
In one example, a staff member believed someone had hit his car door in a campus parking lot. The team reviewed footage, looked at when the vehicle arrived, and determined that the dent was already present before the car was parked on campus. What could have become a dispute was resolved quickly with video evidence.
In another incident early in GUHSD’s Verkada deployment, someone stole a truck from behind Online Learning Academy. Although the district did not have a camera pointed directly at the location where the theft occurred, the vehicle later passed a Verkada camera. GUHSD was able to identify the time the individual left and the direction they were heading, helping police pursue the investigation more productively.
For Graham, the broader impact is that video can help establish facts quickly and fairly. Once students understand that administrators can review footage and see what actually happened, it can also help reinforce accountability across campus.
Using AI alerts and sensors to improve awareness
GUHSD is also using Verkada’s AI-powered capabilities to strengthen visibility across campuses.
For example, if a person of interest should not be on campus, administrators can create a profile in Verkada and receive a notification if that individual appears on camera. The district has also used after-hours motion detection, especially at campuses where trespassing can be a concern.
Rather than alerting on every movement, Verkada helps distinguish between people and animals — an important difference for campuses that frequently see cats or other animals passing through after hours.
“For the most part, it is very accurate,” Graham said. “I’m not getting a bunch of cats and dogs triggering motion detection and being told there is a person there.”
In addition to cameras and access control, GUHSD uses Verkada air quality sensors in server rooms to monitor environmental conditions. In Arizona, heat is a major concern. Graham said the district has had instances where a server room temperature rose unexpectedly after an AC unit failed. With millions of dollars of equipment at stake, having another layer of alerting helps IT respond faster.
As GUHSD continues expanding its use of Verkada, the district is focused on applying sensors where they can have the greatest operational impact — from server rooms and MDF facilities to other high-value areas where temperature spikes or environmental changes could create risk.
Building toward districtwide lockdown readiness
Emergency response remains a critical priority for GUHSD. With Verkada Access Control, the district is working toward a more cohesive lockdown strategy that reduces reliance on manual processes and gives authorized teams the ability to secure doors remotely.
For GUHSD, centralization is the foundation. A single access control system means staff can use one card across Verkada-controlled doors, and IT can manage permissions through Active Directory groups rather than juggling multiple systems.
“If I want to get into a door, I have one card, and I can go to any campus as long as that door is access-controlled by Verkada,” Graham said. “I have one place where I make edits and changes, and it works.”
Looking ahead, GUHSD is also evaluating how SCIM and Active Directory integrations can further streamline onboarding and offboarding, making it easier to automatically provision or revoke access as staff roles change.
For other districts evaluating Verkada, GUHSD’s experience highlights the value of standardization. By bringing campus safety tools into one platform, the district has reduced fragmentation, strengthened oversight, and given administrators a more practical way to manage security across campuses.
As GUHSD continues expanding Verkada, the district is not just adding devices — it is building a more integrated foundation for protecting students, staff, and school communities.