Safety isn’t one-size-fits-all. Urban schools need a school alert system that helps them manage their unique safety challenges while empowering teachers and supporting student well-being.
Unlike rural schools, urban schools serve large, densely populated areas with diverse populations. High enrollments can create staffing challenges and may make it harder to secure funding for needed resources. The sheer amount of students on campus complicates student monitoring and emergency response.
Urban campuses are often spread throughout a city and consist of numerous large, decentralized buildings. Safety solutions must be flexible and easily adaptable to the existing infrastructure. Multi-floor buildings can add complexity to an emergency. An effective school alert system should offer precise incident location information down to the floor and room level.
Addressing these challenges with the right solutions can improve a school’s culture of safety.
Developing a Culture of Safety
According to a report from the Council of the Great City Schools and the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, reducing violence in schools and creating a culture of safety begins by addressing the following three areas:
- Increase mental health support and emotional skills development. Social-emotional learning in schools can help students better regulate their emotions and behavior, setting them up for improved academic success and well-being. Schools could employ the support of mental health experts and provide support for at-risk students who have been exposed to trauma and violence.
- Rethink traditional approaches and policies to school disciplinary actions. This could involve assessing current disciplinary actions like suspensions and creating a working group to consider less exclusionary alternatives. Students, staff, and families can contribute to establishing expectations for behavior, making disciplinary action a mutually agreed upon process.
- Encourage broad-based collaboration between schools, law enforcement, and community members. Safety should be a multi-stakeholder process. When school and law enforcement work together, they are better prepared to communicate effectively during an emergency. Collaboration with law enforcement can also support frequent reviews of safety procedures and confirm processes are current. Encouraging community involvement can lead to programs and partnerships focused on student safety, such as safe passage programs where community members help students get home safely.
When schools proactively address safety and work alongside law enforcement, they support a learning environment where students focus on learning and staff feel supported and valued.
How a Las Vegas School District Addressed School Safety
For Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, the country’s fifth-largest district, safety is a top priority.
According to Dr. Jesus Jara, former Clark County School District Superintendent, the district’s strategic safety plan supports student achievement and staffing goals for two reasons: kids need to feel safe to learn, and staff need to feel safe to teach and work. Safety is fundamental to the functioning of a school system and community, and without it, student performance declines and staff attrition rises.
The district had many safety issues to address, from managing unwelcome and temporary visitors to planning for weather events like snowstorms, and needed a safety solution that could help with all of them. The district first prioritized funding to increase emergency management staffing and then assembled a team to address campus safety concerns.
The Impact of COVID on School Safety
After COVID, Clark County faced a new set of challenges. Student violence increased after the pandemic, resulting in upticks in verbal harassment and threatening behavior that made teaching difficult. Increased anxiety and stress led to more disruptions in the classroom.
The district had to figure out how to support returning students’ mental health and well-being. Unfortunately, there were a large number of student suicides post-COVID. While school systems offer a great place to teach and learn, they were not designed as mental health providers. COVID changed that, leading teachers and staff to need additional training to support the emotional needs of students and help them resocialize.
The district was committed to protecting students and teachers and implemented measures to increase safety. For instance, the district has many open campuses, making it difficult to know when unauthorized visitors access school grounds. The district added fencing to the perimeters and reduced multiple points of entry to one, making it easier to monitor who was on campus.
Tragedy Inspires Clark County to Adopt Wearable Panic Buttons
Despite these safety precautions, a tragic incident occurred at Eldorado High School when a high school student violently assaulted a teacher. The teacher could not access her phone or signal for help and was discovered by a custodian more than an hour and a half after the attack began.
After this tragedy, the district sought to add another safety solution to its existing systems. They needed an alert system that supplemented their current safety investments while avoiding the limitations of certain types of panic buttons, like those mounted to a wall or available on a phone app. As the tragedy revealed, teachers don’t always have access to their phones. A wall-mounted panic button may be out of reach in an emergency, like the teacher who was assaulted. Fixed panic buttons can only be useful when the proximity and range of the emergency make it feasible to reach them
However, wearable panic buttons, like CENTEGIX CrisisAlert™ badges, provide a rapid way to get help from anywhere on campus. The district piloted the CENTEGIX wearable panic button technology, enabling teachers to easily initiate an alert that sends emergency data directly to 911. The pilot was a success, and the technology was adopted across 365 campuses and provided to 40,000 employees.
Teachers and staff now feel empowered. According to Dr. Jara, “The feedback from the field— meaning teachers, custodians, principals—has been tremendous because of the level of security with the instant alert badge that the adults feel that they have now.” Wearable panic buttons also help parents feel more confident about school safety.
CENTEGIX CrisisAlert added another layer of safety to the district’s safety management system. Dr. Jara calls it “one of the best investments” made during his time at Clark County Schools. “I wish we would have added this to our layers of security before this tragedy,” said Dr. Jara.
The CENTEGIX Safety Platform™ for Urban Campus Safety
The CENTEGIX Safety Platform integrates numerous capabilities and solutions that allow urban schools to respond rapidly to emergencies. CENTEGIX CrisisAlert is a wearable panic button that enables teachers and staff to quickly and discreetly trigger an alert for help. It sends critical emergency data to responders, providing precise location information of where help is needed.
CENTEGIX Safety Blueprint™ is a dynamic digital map of your campus and its safety assets that can be quickly and easily updated and shared with law enforcement, first responders, and other relevant safety stakeholders, providing the critical data needed during an emergency.
CENTEGIX Visitor Management™ helps urban schools monitor temporary guests such as vendors, independent contractors, and day visitors. With Enhanced Visitor Management, school officials can locate visitors in real time to maintain campus safety and keep first responders informed during an emergency.
With the CENTEGIX Safety Platform, urban schools can nurture a culture of safety and improve collaboration between administration and law enforcement. When teachers and staff feel safe, they can focus on their students’ academic success. This contributes to improved well-being and retention. CENTEGIX makes urban schools better, safer places to work and learn.
Click here to learn more about what we can do for your school district and see a demo of the CENTEGIX Safety Platform.
