Maintaining and improving the safety of our schools should be a top priority for every community. Not only are these educational institutions important for making sure that our children can grow up with the knowledge and resources they need to navigate the world, but the next generation deserves to feel protected and secure in these environments.
Unfortunately, problems like bullying, violence and virus transmission are real concerns for school safety. For example, according to the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 19.5% of students said they experienced bullying on school property during the previous year.
Implementing technological solutions in an effective manner can help improve school safety. The Safe Schools bundle from Motorola Solutions follows a simple but comprehensive model for intervening during a variety of school safety concerns: Detect, analyze, communicate and respond.
Detect, Analyze, Communicate and Respond for Safe Schools
As part of a suite of solutions available across several different environments — like health care facilities, public venues and more — Motorola Solutions offers bundled services to help safety and security staff locate, assess, dispatch and intervene quickly. Safe Schools involves a combination of communications and video monitoring technology.
Detect troublesome behavior or alarming activities
The first stage in identifying potential safety challenges for a school is having the ability to observe when something seems amiss in the hallways, classrooms or grounds. By using video security technology, license plate recognition, access monitoring, anonymous tips and other capabilities, Safe Schools can detect potential safety concerns.
For example, anonymous tips submitted through a mobile app can help school staff discover potential bullying quickly. Thermal imaging cameras positioned at entryways can help monitor students and staff for signs of illness. Access control and license plate technology can help determine if unauthorized individuals are present and report where they’ve been.
Analyze the data to gather further information
Manual analysis of raw video footage can be time-consuming and ineffective, especially when a quick response is required. By pairing visual feeds with video analytics and other features, schools can search for individuals using descriptions or facial analytics, identify unusual movements and more.
These video analysis features pick up where detection technology leaves off. Once a breach is recorded, school officials can quickly track movements or match an individual’s ID to their license plate to locate them on the grounds. Unusual motion detected by the video system can help augment raw information supplied from anonymous tips to provide a fuller picture of incidents.
Communicate the action plan to responders
In order to intervene quickly, efficient communication is essential. Safe schools depend on the assistance of a variety of support staff and volunteers, all of whom should be empowered to respond within their capabilities. Tools like two-way radios or other push-to-talk (PTT) solutions, radio alarms and mass notifications can facilitate speedy interventions. Internet-connected, multimedia record-keeping helps schools analyze trends for further proactive measures, limiting the need for future crisis response.
Mass notifications can be crucial for immediately communicating a schoolwide lockdown. Two-way radios or other PTT options can quickly inform nurses or administrators if signs of illness are detected. Individual incidents detected through anonymous tips or video analytics can be communicated to appropriate responders if a one-on-one approach is required.
Respond to potential safety concerns
Centralized communications can help ensure that school safety is maintained through clear messaging that allows individuals to know their role and respond appropriately. In addition, ensuring that communications and analytics systems are interoperable with local public safety agencies can save crucial time while seamlessly transferring data during emergencies. Technology that enables field pre-population for incident reports ensures speedy, accurate communication.
By appropriately dispatching help as well as communicating with outside agencies and accurately logging incidents, critical school safety response metrics can be improved. In addition, school officials can use appearance searches to implement contact tracing throughout the facilities if it has been identified that an infected individual was in the school recently.
Implementing Comprehensive Systems for Safe Schools
Bundled technology makes it easier to develop fast, comprehensive plans for school safety. Successful implementation, however, can take time and care. If done incorrectly, the security flow — detect, analyze, communicate and respond — can fall short of providing a robust solution for safe schools. At Day Wireless Systems, we have experience with complex, end-to-end implementations for comprehensive communications, video monitoring and analytics technology.
To learn more about how Day Wireless Systems can help you implement a Safe Schools bundle from Motorola Solutions, contact our team today.