Page 112 - Security Today, July/August 2022

medical issue, physical altercation or a campus-wide threat—is key to enabling staff to feel safe and protected. That way, they can focus on teaching the learning moments that matter in the classroom.
Guy Grace, Chairman of Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS), has 35 years of experience as a Director of Security and Emergency Planning. “I have said for many years that safe schools empower the teachers to teach, the students to learn and the community to be more productive not worrying about their loved ones learning and working in the schools,” Grace said.
Increasingly, school districts are turning to new emergency response solutions to protect their staff. And, as technology inno- vates, so do the options schools have to best protect students and staff. How do school systems evaluate and choose the most effective emergency notification solutions?
Knowing the gaps in traditional systems (wall-mounted panic but- tons, mobile phone applications) helps define the characteristics of an optimal school emergency response system. Systems that will best secure the safety and wellbeing of students and staff should meet the following five criteria:
1. Address All Types of Emergencies, Daily Incidents, and Crises
School leaders and communities tend to think first about how best to prevent and respond to tragic school shootings, but school shootings remain statistically rare. Only 0.00008 percent of K–12 schools have had a mass shooting incident in the past 30 years.
But schools do face a variety of health and safety incidents every day. Accidental injuries, fights, weather incidents, and fires are more common events that require unique, rapid responses to keep students and staff safe—and sometimes save lives.
Schools reported 1.4 million crimes in 2015–2016 (the most recent year of data), with 79 percent of schools recording at least one crime incident. This included 449,000 crimes reported to the police.
In that same year, 10 percent of teachers reported being threatened with injury by a student. And in 2017, 4 percent of students ages 12–18 reported that they had feared attack or harm at school during the year.
Injury incidents also occur frequently. According to the CDC, more than 200,000 students under the age of 14 are treated in the hospital for playground injuries each year. High-school athletes alone account for an estimated 2 million injuries, as well as 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations each year. And according to the National Institute of Health, 68 percent of school nurses manage life- threatening emergencies.
A complete, effective emergency notification solution must address all of these school safety incidents, as well as provide the greatest protection and response in a worst-case active shooter situation. Some scenarios for administrators to consider:
• Would this emergency notification solution let staff quickly respond
to a student medical emergency or a fight on the playground?
• Would it enable the front-desk personnel to request help without escalating a situation with an irate non-guardian demanding to see
their child?
• Would it enable swift response if a domestic dispute erupts in the
parking lot during a student pickup?
Schools also can gather real crisis scenario examples from teachers
and staff to ensure that their emergency notification solutions will address all incidents they will likely face. Given limited funding, this helps schools to prioritize their investments to cover and be able to respond to the most likely incidents.
2. Make It Available to Everyone, Everywhere
An emergency notification system can only save lives if it is available.
Staff must be able to request help or initiate a lockdown from any- where on campus, whether it’s the classroom, the playground, the parking lot, or the stadium. As the Center for Homeland Defense and Security has reported, nearly half of school shooting incidents occurred outside the school building. Accidents, injuries, fights, and other response events occur in all corners of the school grounds.
This best practice of “anyone, anytime, anywhere” was cited in 2013 after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary and repeated in the MSDHS Safety Commission’s report following the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. To maximize acces- sibility and coverage, every teacher and staff member should wear a mobile panic button (such as a badge) at all times and be able to trig- ger a response or a lockdown without depending on WiFi or a cellular connection.
3. Be Simple and Fast to Use
Every second saved in an emergency—whether in requesting help or providing critical information to responders—improves the chances for a positive outcome. An analysis of 41 school shootings between 2008 and 2017 by the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center found that two-thirds of attacks lasted less than 2 minutes. Nearly half were over in less than 60 seconds.
Emergency Notification
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Time is also critical when responding to an altercation, injury, or