Category: Blog

While school shooting tragedies continue to flood the headlines of our local and national news outlets (with 16 school shootings this year alone), district stakeholders are doing what they can to prevent such incidents from occurring in their own school communities.

And if you find yourself among those committed to making their school communities safer, we want you to know this: You are not alone in your efforts.

As the school year draws to a close, our team is taking a look back at the school safety and communications lessons we’ve learned. We encourage you to read through the insights we’ve shared below as actionable lessons to help improve your safety profile.

… because when it comes to school safety, we’re all in this together.

Lesson #1: There Are Lessons to Learn and Common Challenges to Tackle as School Leaders

In the wake of tragedy, what can we really stand to learn from incidents like the one in Uvalde, Texas?

That question is a meaningful one. And our team explored these lessons learned from Uvalde in our seminar, Deconstructing Uvalde: Leveraging Technology for Safer Schools this spring. We reviewed the key takeaways from that series further in a recent blog which you’ll find here.

At Eastern DataComm, we believe that these key learnings can inform schools and districts across the country to enhance the ways they stay connected and protected during an emergency.

If you find after reading these articles that you’re interested in exploring how best to leverage technology to keep your school safe, connect with us. Our diagnostic and consultative approach to school safety and communications technology allows us to tailor solutions to meet the needs of your unique school community.

Lesson #2: Reliance on Apps Alone Is Not Enough to Keep Your School Safe and Secure

This year has shed light on how sole reliance on app-only solutions is simply not sufficient when it comes to emergency notification and response. Though they are one piece of the puzzle, they do not complete the full school safety picture when used in isolation.

In addition to ensuring your campus grounds and buildings benefit from total coverage, it’s vital to create a school safety ecosystem that provides a variety of notifications to address the needs of your school staff, students, parents, and visitors. From enabling substitutes to have a way to receive lockdown notifications to ensuring that students with hearing impairments can receive emergency notifications visually through lights and sign boards, there are so many ways to enhance your school’s ability to respond comprehensively when every moment counts.

This year, in addition to our blog detailing the pitfalls of app-only solutions, we also hosted a webinar called “Why Apps Are Not Enough: How Holistic, Comprehensive Approaches to School Safety Save Lives”, which you can find on our Webinar page here.

The bottom line when it comes to app-only approaches is this: Their shortcomings can be addressed by leveraging other technology solutions working in unison that ensure everyone gets the message and can respond accordingly during an emergency situation.

Lesson #3: Access Control and Video Surveillance Are Vital to School Safety and Security

From controlling who enters your building with access control systems to keeping an eye on your buildings and grounds with video surveillance, there are several noteworthy security technologies that you can use to secure your district or school.

The right access control system can make all the difference, and the same is true of the right video surveillance solution.

And as the next school year draws closer, it may be time for you and your district stakeholders to consider adding these technologies to your school’s safety ecosystem or upgrading existing systems so they’re as effective as possible.

Why focus on these two systems?

Well, aside from their individual benefits, it’s worth noting that these two solutions work together to show where an active threat is located. This empowers law enforcement to be prepared and to respond effectively in the most dire circumstances. You can also integrate these systems with your federally compliant multi-line VoIP phone systems to ensure speedy communication with first responders and emergency services. This is just one more way to take your safety and physical security profile to the next level.

Lesson #4: Don’t Forget That Money to Support Your School’s Safety Is Available

According to Campus Safety Magazine, there is a push for legislation that would increase school safety and security funding. And in the meantime, there are a variety of federal grant programs with open applications.

In fact, Eastern Datacomm shared the details on a number of them earlier this year in one of our recent blogs.

So, if budgetary restrictions are holding you back from making investments to improve your school safety ecosystem, be sure to check out the potential grant opportunities and reach out to our team if you have any questions as you move forward.

Lesson #5: Integration and Technology Systems Working in Unison Are the Future of School Safety and Security

Given all that we’ve learned this school year, it’s very appropriate to spend a moment exploring the benefits of a comprehensive, integrated solution for your emergency notification solution needs.

Our Lockdown and Emergency Notification System and continuous monitoring service, LENS + OPTICS, can augment communications and enhance safety during an emergency. In fact, this solution brings together VoIP phone systems, paging systems, bells and clocks, signboards, and video surveillance to remove the chance for human error and increase your ability to respond quickly and effectively when it matters most.

And you can learn more about why LENS + OPTICS is the emergency notification system that schools rely upon to safeguard their communities by clicking here.

Prepare for Next School Year with Eastern DataComm

Ready to ensure your school or district stays connected and protected next year?

Reserve your complimentary consultation with our team to explore how we can help!

Our Eastern DataComm team recently hosted a series of live, in-person seminars spanning New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut. School officials and stakeholders whose responsibility it is to ensure the safety of their campuses came from far and wide to join us for this educational experience. The series was incredibly well-received by our attendees and today, we’re sharing the key takeaways from the seminars so you can benefit from the insight we offered, even if you could not join us at one of the locations for the live events.

1) Apps Are Not Enough

One of the biggest takeaways many attendees received from our latest seminar series was the understanding that apps alone are not enough to sufficiently connect and protect their communities in an emergency situation. While those who fell victim to the active shooter in Uvalde, TX, had an app, bad cell service rendered it ineffectual. And this is not simply an issue faced by that single Texas elementary school. Across the country, schools, especially those with older buildings, struggle with less-than-effective cell service. This can not only slow down app-based notifications, but it can also prevent them from working at all. The result: some people do not receive the notification, and that can place them in imminent danger. Another key point worth mentioning: apps such as the one used in this case study only work IF the user has their phone with them and is able to access it. Oftentimes, this isn’t the case for teachers and students in the course of their daily educational and extracurricular activities. 

You can learn more about the significant limitations of phone application-only emergency notification solutions in our past webinar on the subject here. You’ll also discover how a comprehensive school safety ecosystem, featuring integrated technology, can offer you a more robust alternative that’s far more effective when every second counts.

2) ‘Full Coverage’ Is of the Utmost Importance

Another key takeaway from our latest in-person School Safety seminar series was the importance of total coverage. This phrase means that all people in your buildings and on your grounds, from substitute teachers and visitors to staff and students, quickly receive emergency notifications. In addition, those emergency notifications must be clear, concise, and prompt action that is an appropriate response for the situation at hand. 

And far from being simply a buzz phrase, total coverage is the cornerstone of keeping your school and those in it connected and protected.

While it may seem obvious to some, often stakeholders do not realize where vulnerabilities in coverage may exist until an emergency occurs.

At that point, the safety of the campus and grounds are placed in jeopardy as a result. 

The Eastern DataComm team takes the time to understand your needs and your potential areas of vulnerability when it comes to total coverage and effective mass notification.

3) Understanding Your Areas of Potential Vulnerability Is Essential

According to a recent survey by School Safety Magazine, school officials were often pleased with flexible, fast, and reliable systems that allow for a variety of swift and clear communication approaches. Those communications either exist or occur within the same system (like SMS messages, sirens, push notifications, automated phone calls, on-screen communication, and more). This integrated, multimodal technology approach makes their systems versatile for unique student populations and a myriad of challenging school situations that may occur before, during, and/or after school emergencies.

From recognizing the needs of your unique student populations to dealing with communication issues in remote areas of your campus, you may face a variety of potential vulnerabilities when it comes to ensuring everyone on your campus can effectively receive notifications, understand what those messages/signals mean, and respond accordingly during an emergency. 

As we shared with our seminar attendees, we offer a diagnostic and consultative approach to school safety that takes the guesswork out of improving your school safety ecosystem.

Part of this process includes asking questions about your school environment, current technology, and what you need your safety and physical security solutions to achieve for you. 

As we connect with you, we pay careful attention to the needs of the population that traffics your campus. This allows our team to deliver a comprehensive system that not only quickly and accurately communicates with your school community, but also allows them to easily understand what those emergency notifications mean – regardless of sensory ability. 

When analyzing your current school safety profile, our team not only recognizes areas where you exceed safety guidelines, but we also explore where vulnerabilities exist to offer potential improvements you could make to enhance your safety, communications, and physical security technology.

Simply put: We help you discover the changes you can make to keep your community connected and protected.

4) Policies and Procedures Are Simply One Part of the Equation

The right policies and procedures are no doubt effective ways to keep your school districts safe, but as we shared with our attendees when we discussed the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting tragedy, there are factors beyond policy that can enhance your ability to follow those procedures when the time comes.

Executing what you and your school community practiced during drills is an exercise in consistency. 

Drills, when coupled with the right technology, can bring down response time and bring up the safety and security of your buildings and grounds during an emergency.

As one of our customers will attest to, “With our drills, we’re locked down, basically clearing the halls within 10 seconds … And the more quickly we secure the buildings, that’s more lives that we’re going to save.“ 

• Burlington County, NJ School District Safety and Emergency Management Coordinator

So, while we always encourage our customers to continue rehearsing for potential emergency situations through drills and enhancing policy or procedure to keep up with evolving safety needs, we also help them couple those practices with the right communications and safety technology solutions. This empowers our customers to feel confident that they’re doing all they can to keep those entrusted in their care safe and sound.

5) Clear Communication Is Part of the Safe Response Process

When you’re notifying an entire campus of an active threat or emergency situation, you need your messages to come through quickly and clearly. That way, the response from law enforcement and first responders can occur rapidly – mitigating damage and saving lives. 

According to the aforementioned School Safety Magazine Survey, challenges with message delivery verification impacted over 20% of respondents, and 23% had issues with the clarity of their sirens and loudspeakers. 

Despite these challenges, or perhaps because of them, over 40% of K–12 campuses plan to upgrade a variety of notification technologies including their paging systems and intercoms. 

And as we explained to our School Safety seminar attendees, our LENS + OPTICS system includes the ability to create a conference call with key stakeholders. 

With our state-of-the-art visual and audio communication technology, paging system announcements, signboards, emergency calls to first responders, and other approaches to communication are fully automated. Working with telephony industry leader Mitel, phone systems allow for an added layer of security ensuring those you contact can hear you loud and clear when it matters most.

The result is streamlined communication that allows you to focus on responding in that moment – be you a student on camera or a police officer arriving at the scene. Ultimately, clear communication delivered through the use of integrated, multimodal technology keeps everyone safe.

6) Integrating Your Technology Removes Potential Human Error

School Safety Magazine recently surveyed respondents to understand the challenges they faced when creating effective mass notification approaches for their schools and districts. 

Those challenges included:

• a lack of support from vendors
• few, if any, options for flexible integration with new technology
• time delays in message delivery
• an undersupply of visual alert lights
• failing speakers or paging devices
• need for total coverage in areas like outdoor fields, cafeterias, and gyms

The respondents shared that they were looking for more from their emergency notification and response technologies. And at Eastern DataComm, through years of listening and attending to those pain points for our customers in the education, business, and municipal sectors, we know exactly what they mean. That’s why we do things differently.

When you rely on your teachers, volunteers, staff, or administrators to execute every step of your mass notification and emergency response process manually, you run the risk of human error. Even the most well-trained stakeholders can make a mistake when tensions are high and time is of the essence.

As we shared with our attendees, this is the exact reason you’ll want a streamlined, comprehensive, and integrated emergency response system.

From video surveillance and FCC-compliant multi-line phone systems to access control and emergency response notifications, when everything is working together seamlessly in a self-monitoring system you have greater peace of mind.

And if it sounds too good to be true, rest assured it’s not.

At Eastern DataComm, we call LENS + OPTICS our solution to the challenges that have plagued school officials when addressing their comprehensive school safety concerns.

When every second counts, you can rely upon our lockdown and emergency notification system and continuous monitoring service (LENS + OPTICS) to help you quickly and effectively communicate danger and save lives. 

LENS + OPTICS allows you to instantly alert everyone during a critical situation. At the push of a button, you can automatically institute a lockdown, evacuation, or shelter-in-place during an active threat or other emergency.

And because technology is at the core of this response, you remove the chance for human error. 

Keep Your School Connected and Protected with Eastern DataComm

Want to find the best ways to enhance your school or district’s emergency response and mass notification systems so that clear communication keeps everyone safe?

 Reserve your complimentary consultation with our team to explore your options!