As the saying goes, ‘It takes a village.’ This rings especially true when it comes to facilitating community safety. Schools can foster safety by ensuring a diverse group of individuals shares the responsibility for the community’s well-being, with all members actively prioritizing prevention. Empowering more people to respond to emergencies on school campuses creates greater opportunities for rapid and effective intervention.
Comprehensive school safety solutions enable the entire school and community to contribute to cultivating a culture of safety. This community-wide culture not only prepares everyone for emergencies but also mitigates their potential impact.
Emergency Response Pitfalls: A Story
Imagine that Meadowvale Elementary is a K-8 school in the Midwest, home to around 600 students. At lunchtime, the school cafeteria thrums with students laughing and talking as they enjoy their meals. Teachers stand near the exits, monitoring those who need to leave for the bathroom.
A sudden shout cuts through the chatter, drawing the attention of students and teachers toward the far side of the room. There, a young girl struggles to breathe, clutching her chest in panic. Her classmates crowd around her, unsure of what to do.
Mr. Perkins, the lead teacher on duty, quickly navigates through the packed room, accompanied by his two colleagues. As one of the few teachers carrying a phone, Mr. Perkins knows he has to call for help. His hands tremble as he dials 911, taking twice as long to hit the correct buttons.
A dispatcher answers quickly. “911, what’s your emergency?” she asks calmly.
“I’m at… Meadowvale Elementary,” Mr. Perkins gasps. “There is a student who can’t breathe.”
He reluctantly takes his eyes off the student and turns to the closet teacher, his phone still pressed to his ear, and yells, “Bob, go get the nurse!” The teacher hesitates for a moment, looking at the distressed students around him, then takes off running as Mr. Perkins turns back to the student in crisis.
The dispatcher asks for the address, and Mr. Perkins struggles to remember as the students around him become louder, seeing their classmates in distress. He initially gives the wrong address but corrects himself. The dispatcher assures him that help is on the way and asks for his exact location, which he provides with difficulty.
After several long minutes, the nurse finally arrives to help. Mr. Perkins turns his attention to the surrounding students, trying to keep everyone calm until the paramedics arrive.
Without innovative safety solutions in place, the responsibility for alerting first responders can fall to the teachers, who are stressed and trying to keep their students safe. This situation may lead to delays in requesting help or providing accurate information, which can negatively impact and complicate first responders’ efforts.
Teachers Are Anxious About Their Safety
Today’s teachers should be focused on educating the next generation of leaders. Yet, concerns about their safety and that of their students affect their performance. According to a 2024 National Educator Survey Report:
- 80% of teachers think of their own physical safety when at work.
- 67% feel that their school or district does not highly prioritize staff safety.
- 45% have considered leaving or left their job due to feeling unsafe.
- 57% know of a colleague who has left their job due to feeling unsafe.
When teachers lack confidence in school safety, they leave the profession. Teachers quitting leads to staff turnover and teacher shortages. Teacher turnover isn’t a thing schools can afford. It could cost an average of $25,000 per teacher in large districts. If your district faces budget cuts, it will become harder to replace those teachers, which affects student achievement.
Dr. Roderick Sams, Chief Development Officer, CENTEGIX, remarked, “We hear that districts are being challenged. Teachers have low job satisfaction–they don’t feel like they’re supported or listened to. People want to feel like administrators are listening to their concerns and making investments in the safety side.”
Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Gabriella Durán Blakey added, “A central problem is that teachers don’t feel empowered. They don’t have the tools to handle these situations…If our staff doesn’t feel safe, and they don’t have a sense of confidence in their own efficacy as a teacher, then that’s impacting our students too and how they feel because they value the adults and feed off the energy of the adults.”
Dr. Sams noted, “It’s about response time. We’re starting to see an impact when response time isn’t reduced. When a disruption or medical emergency occurs, how quickly it can be resolved plays a role in how much time teachers can put back into instruction.”
Creating Shared Responsibility
When school leaders invest in the safety of their staff, they also invest in teacher retention and student achievement. The key to this is creating shared responsibility. A healthy school culture makes everyone feel empowered to contribute to community safety.
Administrators must find ways to support staff members so they don’t make safety decisions in isolation. Creating a healthy school climate involves everyone. A school climate is the school’s personality as experienced by the school’s community. When everyone is engaged at some level within the school’s community, there will be a greater sense of belonging and shared responsibility for the community’s well-being.
Administrators can help nurture a positive school culture by removing the burden of anxiety about safety. Dr. Durán Blakey commented, “We need to focus on building a positive culture and think about how we can alleviate the heavy weight of anxieties about school safety.” By equipping all staff members to participate in safety preparation, they’re empowered to participate in safety preparation and response for a sense of shared responsibility.
Creating a response team comprised of staff members and first responders, either for a local response team for a staff alert or the response team for a campus-wide alert, helps everyone feel more prepared and empowered in the face of an emergency.
During campus-wide alerts, the key to creating shared responsibility is utilizing safety technology that not only enhances situational awareness but also integrates automation effectively. In the event of a crisis, CENTEGIX users can trigger a campus-wide alert that automatically notifies 911 and law enforcement. Safety BlueprintTM provides all responders with a map of the campus, the precise room and floor-level location of the incident, and all nearby safety assets. For schools equipped with cameras, real-time crime centers can access live camera feeds surrounding the emergency. This allows 911 dispatch to communicate with law enforcement and first responders en route to better triage the situation and identify helpful assets along the way.
Choosing school safety solutions that engage everyone prevents situations in which one individual is responsible for decisions about emergency response and dispatching first responders and law enforcement. Train staff to use these solutions and on safety protocols, so everyone knows what to do in the event of an emergency. Then, equip everyone with the tools necessary to request help.
CENTEGIX: School Safety Solutions That Support a Positive School Culture
The CENTEGIX School Safety Platform™ is the foundation of schools’ layered safety plans. It’s built for rapid incident response and includes:
- CENTEGIX Safety Blueprint™: Dynamic critical incident mapping for efficient and rapid incident response
- CENTEGIX CrisisAlert™: Wearable badge empowering your staff can get help anywhere on campus with the push of a button
- CENTEGIX Visitor Management: Screen authorized visitors onto campus and monitor visitors to campus
What Happens in an Emergency
The CENTEGIX Safety Platform featuring CrisisAlert empowers multiple people to be involved in emergency responses.
Let’s say a staff member needs help due to student disruption or an emergency. When someone pushes their badge three times, it triggers an alert. Local response team members receive an alert on their desktop and their phones with a map of the incident location. If needed, administrators can elevate an alert to a campus lockdown or contact 911 for medical services.
When someone pushes the badge eight times or more, it initiates a campus-wide alert. This sets the school’s emergency response safety protocols for campus-wide alerts into motion. Everyone on campus is alerted through audio, visual, and desktop take-overs, which can be customized by the district.
CrisisAlert empowers staff to protect themselves and their students. Dr. Sams noted that equipping staff with CrisisAlert badges shows prospective and current teachers that “your personal safety is a priority for us and we’re going to make this investment to demonstrate that.”
When they see school leaders are invested in their safety, staff members’ anxiety diminishes. This frees staff up to invest time and energy into student achievement. In addition, staff members become active participants in creating a positive school culture. With CENTEGIX school safety solutions, school leaders make the responsibility of emergency response a schoolwide responsibility.
CENTEGIX responds to the what-ifs. The Safety Platform eliminates the problems that can arise when only one person is aware that an emergency is unfolding.
Make Safety a Shared Responsibility with the CENTEGIX Safety Platform
The components of the CENTEGIX Safety Platform help schools nurture a healthy school climate in which everyone shares responsibility for school safety. Learn more about CENTEGIX school safety solutions.
