Educators have access to an array of student and campus data thanks to digital school safety solutions and student information systems like OneRoster and PowerSchool. But without automation (or an administrator with extra time), that data doesn’t mean anything. Innovative technology can automate many visitor management and school attendance tasks and responsibilities, identifying early checkout patterns and warning signs, enhancing and automating security and identity checks for visitors, maintaining visitor location data in case of emergency, and yielding more accurate data for your school safety plan.
Automation is Simple and Reduces Human Error
The main purpose of automation is to remove repetitive work from the human hand to reduce error as much as possible. In a school with 1,000 students, there are 1,000 chances to record the wrong attendance data. Add to those students the dozens of volunteers, parents, contractors, and community members walking through the doors throughout the day. Automation significantly reduces human error when implemented properly. New innovations in automation allow us to reduce inaccuracies while simultaneously speeding up repetitive tasks that waste time. Less human error means the level of safety of any task is consistently higher. Dr. Jim McMullen of Olathe Public Schools uses a school safety solution with automation and agrees:
“The simplicity piece and the human error piece were critical for us. Our philosophy is that you can have the best plans in the world, but if you have a human error implementing those plans, it’s all for naught. Anytime you can take human error out of notifying folks, I think it’s critical, and it certainly speeds everything up.”
Every. Second. Matters.®
An automated visitor management and attendance system decreases the amount of time and energy your teachers and administrators spend on these tasks (not to mention the distractions those tasks represent). Attendance isn’t a teacher’s largest burden, but it’s one more thing on a long list of tasks that get in the way of teaching. Research has shown time and again that increased teacher focus on instruction leads to better educational outcomes for students. Removing repetitive tasks from teachers’ daily routines allows them to utilize their entire class time to teach students. Teachers have dozens of things they must manage every day, often at the same time. Solutions like automated attendance reduce the risk of human error and allow teachers to engage students properly. When redundant tasks are eliminated, there is more time for students. With automated attendance, students can start learning as soon as they sit down. Tools like CENTEGIX Visitor Management can integrate with PowerSchool to automate a number of tasks:
- Record all visitors entering and leaving campus
- Record student attendance
- Background checks
- Custody issue alerts
- Banned individual check from custom lists
- Report on activities monitored through the system
- Print visitor badges
- Record volunteer hours
- 24/7 PowerSchool sync to record students’ minute-accurate seat time
- Customizable visitor management system for campus activities
- Visitor location data with Enhanced Visitor Management
An administrator’s life is made easier in the Digital Age when automated processes are implemented into standard procedures. In addition to engagement, automation can lead to more accurate data at scale. This streamlines the process for administrators to review reports of data over time and deduce patterns for future improvement. 
Effectively Prioritize Safety and Students’ Wellbeing
With better data, it is easy to review patterns of absence, tardiness, and early checkouts. Well-maintained data can help school administrators identify troubling trends before a student’s education is ultimately affected. Students who regularly check out early can be recorded. Patterns in tardiness can be established to flag administrators of the issue before a student misses out on too much classroom instruction. Even hall pass abuse can show patterns for easy review. These habits can indicate underlying issues, from inconsistent transportation to problems at home. Easy access to accurate data from automated school safety solutions can help administrators and teachers focus less on numbers and more on student well-being. Accurate data from an automated system can direct administrators to the most effective interventions. Often a student’s grade is directly impacted by attendance. Automated daily attendance can help teachers and administrators easily see when absences and tardiness become a problem, allowing them to intervene earlier. Strategies and decisions should be data-driven, and the best data-driven strategies rely on the most accurate data. The goal is to safely and effectively educate children. This is easier said than done for students that need extra care or support. Easily review data from students who frequently sign in late, sign out for early dismissal, or are missing class entirely. Automation allows for less time spent tallying numbers and more time dedicated to the creation of programs for students with underlying issues. Automation Paired with Visitor Management is Safe and Efficient CENTEGIX Visitor Management, part of the CENTEGIX Safety Platform™, is the only visitor management system for schools that syncs real-time data 24/7 with PowerSchool student information system (SIS). CENTEGIX Visitor Management can check Powerschool and other SIS databases and review patterns of early checkout for maximum optimization and safety. This market-defining solution allows for real-time and historical record keeping to create a safe environment at school. CENTEGIX Visitor Management is also the only school visitor management system to offer real-time and historical location of visitors and volunteers through the Enhanced Visitor Management feature. You will always know the location and duration of any visitor on campus who is wearing a visitor badge. During check-in, the Visitor Management system screens all visitors through multiple databases as they are about to enter your school. With more data at their fingertips, administrators have the bandwidth to spend more time ensuring everything on campus is running smoothly for their students. 
Protect Your Campus with CENTEGIX’s School Safety Solutions
Manual attendance is not the only repetitive task that takes too long and can be inaccurate. Daily safety posture on campus can also be improved through innovative school safety solutions. CENTEGIX’s Safety Platform offers a multi-layered approach to safety with solutions that work together to provide a robust safety net for your campus. “Time is the single most critical factor in an emergency, because every second matters,” said Brent Cobb, CEO of CENTEGIX. “Districts spend years preparing for and working to prevent emergencies. When an incident happens, it’s the time that it takes to respond that matters the most. With our CENTEGIX Safety Platform, we’ve taken linear phases of response and compressed them to happen all at once, so that help can arrive as quickly as possible.” CENTEGIX CrisisAlert™ ensures rapid response during a crisis situation. The badge instantly allows wearers to request help to enable coordinated action in critical situations, such as medical incidents or security threats. With the push of a button, users discreetly alert responders in seconds with precise incident location details. School safety solutions like CrisisAlert reduce response times and ensure a fast and effective response. CENTEGIX Visitor management is pivotal for campus security by automating all check-in procedures for volunteers and visitors. Through the Enhanced Visitor Management feature, administrators will have a record of every visitor on campus, their exact location in real-time, and will be able to download detailed reports of a visitor’s time on campus. On a single dashboard you have full visibility and analysis into all visitor and volunteer activities. During crisis events, the location of all visitors wearing a badge will be accessible to first responders allowing them to take appropriate action with all variables in mind. CENTEGIX’s Safety Blueprint™ mapping solution helps you optimize incident response, safety planning, and is the foundation of the CENTEGIX Safety Platform. Ditch paper spreadsheets and questionable version control. Utilize the ability to define and customize safety plans. With Safety Blueprint, staff and administrators can access and update one digital map with current and precise location mapping of every building on campus with the location of all current safety assets. A reunification plan brings staff, students, and personnel back together after an emergency. Innovative technology prioritizes efficiency and helps your team regain control when orderly turns into disarray. CENTEGIX Reunification digitizes this process and effectively reunites parties with their approved guardians. With CENTEGIX, you can utilize automated and innovative school safety solutions to ensure a culture of safety on campus. Reach out to us today to schedule a demo. 
