Planning, phone trees, protocols key to districtwide safety

In earlier blog posts, we discussed how Gallaher can bring its expertise to bear in providing life safety and asset protection services at the school and campus levels to keep students safe.

We can also integrate systems at the district level to ensure top administrators know immediately if an incident is unfolding at an individual school.

People are quick to boil school security down to the micro level of individual schools and campuses, but it’s important that top brass be brought into the loop quickly if an emergency situation arises. Administrators are responsible for formulating crisis responses and alerting parents, sending out alerts and working with media.

While many of our security and surveillance responses are automated, our policy is to communicate threats and incidents directly to the administrative office level via telephone calls from our central station. This is to ensure there is two-way communication and the threat or incident is reported to the proper people rather than relying on texting or push alerts.

A predetermined call list and phone tree is used to alert designated individuals. We want to make sure we reach someone to inform them of any urgent alerts, such as intruders, shooters or fire alarms. Once we alert someone on the call list, we stand down quickly so we don’t interfere with their cooperation with law enforcement and other important players in the midst of a crisis. Our integrated surveillance system can allow administrators to monitor appropriate cameras at individual schools, and we can customize our systems to automatically alert specific people in the event a principal places a school on lockdown or hits a wired panic button.

But the main means of informing top administrators of a verified incident (we don’t want burning popcorn to send everyone scrambling into crisis mode) is through telephone once an alert comes into our monitoring station. Larger school districts make this more of a challenge because of the sheer number of central office staff and school personnel. That’s why communication is key.

We review protocols up front to ensure everyone is on the same page should an incident erupt anywhere in a school district. We are here to fill in any communication gaps that should emerge, and that is integral to keeping students safe at the individual school, campus and district level.

Contact Us today for more information on our school surveillance and security options.