Like it or not for students (and teachers!) we’ve found ourselves once again in “back-to-school” season. Although the heat makes it easy to forget, Labor Day and the first day of school loom right around the corner. At this time of year, we encourage our customers with school-aged kids to put together a security plan for their entire family. This can add both security and peace of mind as summer vacation winds down. In this post, we aim to help you in adding school season security this year.

For starters, we’ll run through some of the unique security challenges faced during the school year. From there, we’ll begin addressing these issues one by one. First, we’ll look at a couple ways you can track your kids’ activity in your home. This will include an overview of our extremely popular interactive monitoring service. Additionally, we’ll see how adding extra sensors throughout your home can greatly improve overall family security. Finally, we’ll shift our attention to one of the most effective security-related smart home products that you can install. Now, let’s dive in by sharing some unique school season security challenges.

Unique School Season Security Challenges

The school routine often puts kids in charge of getting home from school alone. This can lead to a couple issues. For one, independent kids often like to change their plans instead of returning straight home from school. When this happens, parents often like to know about it. Therefore, we’ll make sure to give you some ways to find out when this happens. Additionally, you also want to track kids’ activities inside your home to make sure they don’t get into rooms or areas you wish to keep closed off from them. Of course, we provide ways to do this as well.

Furthermore, getting home from school itself can create a security issue for kids that find themselves losing keys. Of course, losing a key near your home can lead to the wrong person gaining access. Additionally, leaving spare keys around your home or with neighbors to prepare for this possibility also hurts key security. We’ll show you how installing a keypad smart lock can help you alleviate all of these potential issues. Let’s get started!

Tracking Your Kids’ Activity in Your Home

As we pointed out, tracking activity within the home can add multiple layers of security. Parents generally prioriotize both knowing when their kids get home and keeping them out of sensitive areas of the home itself. We have multiple means of addressing these important security concepts. In this section, we’ll share a couple pieces of equipment you can use to do so. Let’s begin by seeing how adding our interactive monitoring services can improve your school season security.

An Alarm.com alert indicating that the security system has not been armed by 8:30 AM.

Creating Alarm.com alerts that notify you if nobody armed the alarm system by a certain time allows you to fix this security faux pas with the press of a button.

Alarm.com Interactive Security Features

When we monitor security systems, we prefer to do so with our Alarm.com cellular dialer. This dialer provides a truly unique alarm monitoring experience in the form of interactive security monitoring. When we mention “interactive” monitoring, we refer to the ability for your alarm to interact directly with you and other alarm users through a smartphone app. For starters, this lets you control your security system with your phone. Just as importantly, and more relvantly to this post, interactive monitoring provides you with instant text alerts that you can customize to your liking.

For example, these alerts generally notify you to any alarm activation events. Furthermore, you can also create an alert to find out when someone arms or disarms your security system. If you use different alarm codes for different family members, this alert will even tell you who has used the alarm! Therefore, if a different family member gets home first than usual, you will know. Finally, you can also create alerts for events that do not happen. This allows you to set an alert for a specific time that you expect someone home. If nobody disarms the security system by then, you will know immediately. These alerts add tremendous security to families with students. Next up, we’ll explore the option of adding extra security sensors to improve school season security.

Adding Contact Sensors for Extra Security

In our post sharing Unconventional Uses for Contact Sensors, we discuss adding security by installing contacts in creative areas, instead of just on exterior doors. This concept works especially well for families with school-aged children. For example, placing contacts on medicine and liquor cabinets can help secure areas of your home that children shouldn’t approach. Additionally, installing them on closets or parents’ bedroom doors can help you catch kids trying to snoop. We can program these sensors to create an alarm response even when your kids are home after disarming the security system.

Of course, you want to secure these areas without creating the police dispatch that alarm events usually create. We have a few options to make this happen. For starters, we can program certain sensors to create a siren response and phone call to you, but not a police dispatch. Therefore, even if you miss the phone call, you won’t have to worry about this potential. Even more efficiently, our Alarm.com interactive customers can create this security by setting up detailed notification alerts. For example, you can choose specific contacts that provide an alert any time they detect activity. Therefore, you will have an alert and timestamp after any attempt your kids or a guest makes at breaching any area you wish to keep private. This makes adding these sensors a quick and efficient way to add school season security! Now, let’s take a look at a security tip involving a unique smart home appliance.

The Smart Lock Security Advantage

As we mentioned earlier, key-based security issues arise when you give out or hide spare keys to let your kids into your home. Fortunately, we have the perfect solution for this issue. Smart keypad locks allow you to grant access to your home without the need for keys. These locks have programmable codes that your kids can use to enter your home without the fear of losing keys or the need to make additional copies in case a key does go missing. Furthermore, smart locks such as our preferred Alarm.com model also allow you to control and track usage with your phone.

A Yale smart lock and Alarm.com app open on a smartphone

Smart locks, such as this model by Yale, allow users to control their locks remotely and receive instant locking and unlocking alerts, adding both security and convenience.

This feature means that if you have a contractor or sitter stopping by during the day, you can unlock your door remotely. This removes the threat of someone with a code stopping by uninvited later on! You can also program and delete codes remotely as needed. This proves especially handy when allowing people temporary access to your home during an extended absence. Finally, these remote smart lock features let you receive alerts similar to those discussed in our section on interactive monitoring. This includes alerts based on people locking and unlocking your smart lock. Furthermore, you can also create alerts if your home remains unlocked past a certain time. If the last person out forgets to lock up, now you can fix it with the press of a button! These features work together to make these locks a valuable piece of school season security.

Putting it All Together for Complete School Season Security

We hope that this post helps you improve your school season security. Additionally, we encourage you to contact us with any questions this post raises for you. We will happily answer any security-related queries you may have. Additionally, we also invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both existing and prospective customers. While on site, we can address any existing security concerns you may have. Furthermore, we can also make our own suggestions based on our observations of your property. Together, we can create a plan to keep you and your family as safe as possible during school season, and all year round!