Mobile County Public Schools Discuss Benefits of CENTEGIX CrisisAlert

Intro:

The Mobile County Public Schools presents Homeroom.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Hi, and welcome to Homeroom, where we introduce you to the educators and the students who make a Mobile County Public Schools the best in the state of Alabama. I’m your host Rena Philips. And today we’re gonna talk about what we are doing to keep our schools safe and how we are partnering with the city of Mobile and other agencies to do just that. So joining me, I have Mr. Andy Gatewood, who is the Head of Security for Mobile County Public Schools and Mr. Ernest Scarbrough, who’s the Deputy of Operations.

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

Good morning.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Hi. And so tell me, Mr. Scarbrough, you have a lot of, you wear a lot of hats around here. So tell me what all do you do?

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

Yeah, that’s the truth, I guess. Well, if you think of a school system, you think of academics, right? I’ve got everything outside of academics. So you’re the business, the finance side of it technology facilities, maintenance, of course, safety and secure as well as C&P and a few other items,

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Quite a wide range, pretty,

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

Pretty broad spectrum. Right?

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Never a dull day.

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

Well, not at all. Very different, pretty dynamic. Yep.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Okay. And Andy, you are over security. You were a police officer, and then you were a school resource officer. So tell us how you got to where you are.

Andy Gatewood – Director of Safety and Security – MCPSS:

Yeah, that’s right. I was a police officer with the City of Mobile for a number of years and was fortunate enough to take a position as a school resource officer actually, when the gentleman who was in my place was elected sheriff. I came over to the school system and did that for a number of years and just celebrated 27 years with Mobile County Public Schools. It’s a great place to be and been a director for about five years now.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Yeah. And we’re lucky to have you, I know anytime we have a crisis, you’re the one who we want to be there. I appreciate that. And so speaking of that, I know you’ve put in some measures, some safety measures into place over the last year or so that we wanna talk about including the CrisisAlert system, so do you wanna tell me what that is?

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

Yeah, sure. I’ll get started then let Mr. Gatewood fill in on more the details, but basically CrisisAlert is a crisis management program that empowers our teachers and administrators to call for help with simply the click of a button on a badge, a wearable badge. And actually, I brought one with me. You see, it’s not much larger than a credit card, and if there’s an incident in the classroom it could be the cafeteria anywhere on campus. A teacher administrator can click this three times and it’ll send out a message for a staff alert and by wearing the badge, it’ll also identify where the individual is at, and it’s not dependent on wifi, GPS or, or cell service because it, it runs off a system of strobes that are, that are in the building all throughout the building. They’re down the hall in the classrooms ball fields, and parking lot everywhere on campus. So it basically creates a mesh over their entire school. So anywhere this badge goes is tied to that teacher we’ll know where they’re at. So if there’s an incident, could be a fight, a medical incident, hit the button, and again, they get immediate help. So we’ve been thrilled to have it also, it was very affordable too, which allowed us to put it in, you know, all of our high schools. And now we’re looking at implementing it into the the middle schools as well.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

Okay. And you’ve been around school security for quite some time. What do you think of this system?

Andy Gatewood – Director of Safety and Security – MCPSS:

Oh, absolutely love it. It’s the one that the, I tell you, the singular thing that sold me on the system mainly was the badge itself you know, to be able to have the badge and be anywhere on campus, either inside or outside actually and not only be able to get assistance, but they can also be used to place a school in lockdown, if needed. If you know, for instance, if there was a teacher or a class, just particularly if they were outside and they see an incident or something about to happen that would require the school to be placed in lockdown, they could actually do that from out on the playground or out on the band practice field or whatever. So a very valuable tool. We have you know, it’s, and since it’s been it in place in the high schools, we’ve gotten a lot of use out of it mainly to, you know, get assistance to the classroom not necessarily for the lockdown portion, but if there’s an ill child or, or a disruptive student or something that the teacher needs assistance with and they use that and it has been, we’ve been very successful in use of it so far.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

And do the teachers and staff feel safer having that?

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

Absolutely.

Andy Gatewood – Director of Safety and Security – MCPSS:

I feel certain that they do in fact the company has shared some data with us and they’ve, they’ve reached out and done some you know, asked some questions about how it makes the how it has increased their sense of sense of safety and all that’s been positive.

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

In addition to that, it’s also tied into the Intercom system. So there’s any kind out of alerts, such as a lockdown the students, the staff, they would all hear it over the Intercom system as well with instructions on what to do next. It’s tied into the desktops and well, as well as their phones, I mean, you can send off an alert from the cell phone, if you’re an administrator maybe it’s a weather incident, you know, or a secure perimeter. They can do that from their cell phone as well.

Rena Philips – Director of Communications – MCPSS:

And you mentioned it’s cost-effective. We have it in 13 schools now, are we gonna expand it?

Ernest Scarbrough – Deputy of Operations – MCPSS:

That’s correct. Yes. We’re currently putting it in the middle schools. So we’ll put it in all the middle schools and two alternative schools. That’s correct.