New school safety system could save lives with every second of warning

Strobe lights flashed and warning sirens buzzed as teachers locked down every building in the Galion City School District.

"Lockdown!" A recording announced through the halls. "Students maintain silence! Do not open the door!"

Within seconds, nearly 1,800 children across the district's four schools took shelter from the unknown threat.

Fortunately, it was only a drill.

"They have a plan," the district's superintendent, Jennifer Allerding, said of the students. "They're going to stay where they are until they hear from us."

Teachers and students alike understand that someday the system could save their lives.

"If somebody comes on our campus to cause widespread harm, like, life-threatening harm to our kids and our staff, we need to shut that down as quick as we can," Allerding said. "We need to take care of that, because we don't want anyone on our campus to have something terrible happen."

'Time equals body count'

The March drill was the second such test of the district's new Centegix school safety system, according to Allerding, who last week announced she was resigning to take a job as superintendent of Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village Schools.

Galion administrators learned about the cutting-edge, direct-alert security system last summer during the Ohio School Safety Summit, which is hosted in Columbus each year by the state's School Safety Center.

The safety conversations may have seemed morbid, but they were a reminder that children's lives were at stake.

"Literally the equation that they used was time equals body count," Allerding said. "That kind of fueled our fire."

They did a quick audit of their own disaster notification process and discovered how much time would be wasted if tragedy ever did strike a Galion school. They realized that a teacher in need could easily find themselves calling the principal and then the secretary, only to have those phones ring and ring because the parties were already on a call, were busy talking to parents, or were out of the office handling other duties.

"That's just crazy," Allerding said. "You would then have to go find somebody."

'It had everything that we needed'

Galion administrators found that several states already require their school districts to subscribe to a direct-alert system.

"I anticipate that down the road we will have to do the same," Allerding said.

Their research led them to Centegix, a company that already services schools in Florida, Georgia and Nevada.

"They came and they presented to us," Allerding said. "It had everything that we needed."

Each of the district's four schools had a setup cost of $5,000 each, then an annual $8,000-per-building subscription fee each year. The first five years would be free, though, thanks to state grants.

The school board signed off on the idea in early autumn. By the middle of winter, the entire system was installed. By late January, Galion administrators were testing the system.

"We've used it several times already," Allerding said. "We've had a couple of medical conditions."

Each school employee wears a special badge

The school safety system offers various levels of protection for students, teachers and staff.

The most prominent feature is the badge worn by each school employee that serves as both a tracking device and remote control.

"You press the button three times and it sends an alert to a building," Allerding said.

Those three-button alerts stay within the building and notify other staff members that a student is experiencing a medical emergency or that a fight has broken out — it quickly summons others to come help.

"We already had a situation at the high school," Allerding said. "A student went down two weeks ago and the teacher pressed three buttons. Right away, the response team was there."

An administrator called 911.

"We were able to get the squad in," Allerding said. "We were also able to implement a shelter in place through the system and the student was out the door and at the hospital within, I think, 13 minutes, which is pretty incredible."

'Eight buttons is contacting police'

For more serious situations, teachers can press the button eight times to place the entire school district on lockdown.

"Eight buttons is contacting police," Allerding said. "Locking down the whole district."

Every police car in the city is equipped with an alert that flashes when the school district sends its distress signal, allowing teachers to bypass the dispatcher and request law enforcement immediately.

"That immediately is going to send a message to all of the buildings at the same time," Allerding said.

The superintendent and all of the principals have a smartphone app that shows them a map of where the emergency was reported.

The sirens and strobes go off and an audio recording instructs the children what to do next.

"It takes over everyone's computers and it says lock down," Allerding said. "So, in the classrooms, they have that prompt as well."

The superintendent wants the message coming in as many ways as possible: "Time equals body count, right?"

'This is an important responsibility'

Through their app, school administrators can select individual schools for shelter in place notifications if students need to stay where they are during a typical class change.

The system also handles natural disasters, like tornadoes.

With so many possible scenarios, they know that practice is key.

"This is an important responsibility," Allerding said. "We need to make sure that we're on the same page."

So far, there have been two districtwide tests, with several more in place.

"We wanted to train the staff and make sure that everybody knew how to use it right," Allerding said. "I'm handing everybody in the campus the ability to shut us down in seconds, you know?"

For the children's safety, though, she said it's worth it.

"We can teach them all we want," Allerding said. "But if they're not safe at the end of the day, nothing else matters."

ztuggle@gannett.com

419-564-3508

Twitter: @zachtuggle

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: High-tech safety system can lock down schools in seconds, save lives