If there is an unknown person on campus that would be an emergency notification.”įor parents like Hale, training of school staff and officers is the most important factor in learning to feel safe again. “Never will it be only for a seen weapon. “As far as the emergency alert, the only requirement is that a staff member perceives a threat,” Frangella said. But that training focuses more on how to activate an alert as opposed to when. School Board documents show the total cost of training is $125,500 for the hundreds of sites getting systems. Centegix’s Cobb said the company provides training to the Palm Beach County School District as part of its contract. One is how often or in what cases a staff member might set off an emergency alert. However innovative the new technology, it comes with its blind spots. SaferWatch’s Roefaro said the number of teachers who have agreed to download the SaferWatch app have doubled or tripled since last year.īut Garner and Katz still believe the addition of a physical panic button could provide extra insurance in the event of an emergency, whether for school staff members who refuse to download a mobile application or for those who are not in reach of a phone the moment tragedy strikes. “The district has encouraged the download for years now.” “I’ve heard or seen that is still sending emails and reminders to teachers until the button cards get there,” Katz said. Though not required for mobile download, it’s strongly encouraged for emergencies. Katz said the county still issues occasional reminders to teachers to download the SaferWatch application on their mobile devices. Justin Katz is president of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association and taught for 10 years at Park Vista High School in Lake Worth Beach. The same reservations are true in Palm Beach County. And having that responsibility to have your phone on you all the time can be problematic.” But putting on my phone means now my phone is part of my work property. “I understand the trepidation that some teachers have,” Garner said. Many felt wary of looming privacy issues in using a work-related application on a personal device.Įven Eric Garner, a TV production teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas who taught on campus the day of the 2018 shooting and witnessed the school’s darkest day firsthand, refused to download at first. In the first two months that SaferWatch, Florida’s leading Alyssa’s Law application, became available for download, only 16% of staff in the Broward County School District had it installed on their mobile phones. That experience is not exclusive to Martin County. When Frangella proposed the Centegix system in a School Board meeting in October 2019, he said that “the majority of the staff has declined to install” the application meant for reporting school emergencies. Martin County has had the Centegix system in place for more than a year. “If you needed to send an alert through your cellphone, you would have to actually get your cellphone, unlock it, find the app, find the alert, and then press the alert,” said Francesco Frangella, director of safety and security at the Martin County School District. Some school district employees in Palm Beach County, Broward County and beyond claim that the digital applications are less effective tools in emergency situations. The other nine operate through a mobile or desktop application. 14, 2018, mandates that all Florida schools have panic button systems to quietly and quickly alert emergencies to law enforcement.Ĭentegix is the only company with a wearable school security system out of the 10 school security contractors approved by the Florida Department of Education. The law, named after Alyssa Alhadeff, a 14-year-old student who died in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting on Feb. The wearable panic buttons are a new approach to upholding Alyssa’s Law, which was enacted in Florida two years ago and took effect at the start of the 2021 school year. We’re already doing integration right now for them.” A different approach “When their system is up and running, it will be integrated into SaferWatch. “When someone presses the panic button on Centegix their data is actually going to be pushed through the SaferWatch platform into the different 911 centers in Palm Beach County,” said Geno Roefaro, chief executive officer of SaferWatch. When a panic button is pressed more than eight times, it sets off a campus-wide emergency: strobe lights go off, the campus announcement system and school desktops are taken over, and the location within the school where the alert was triggered is recorded by the hub to relay to law enforcement. When a panic button is pressed three times, it signifies a school emergency. “We’re the only ones that bring our own network to those four elements.” “The lights, the intercom, the desktop takeover, the inside location,” said Brent Cobb, Centegix president.
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