As our nation continues to experience the ongoing tragedies wrought by violence both on and off campuses, our Eastern DataComm team remains resolute in our commitment to fostering safer school and district communities.
We’re sharing our newest aid for school leaders and district stakeholders, Building a Safer School Safety Ecosystem: A Comprehensive Guide.
The guide not only features relevant data, but also case studies that provide real-life examples of how schools just like yours have implemented these practical approaches to school safety.
The guide’s publication was shared in a recent press release (which you can find here). But, in truth, it is more than simply words on a page. It is a resource designed to help you gain a better understanding of the technology and strategies that compose a school safety ecosystem. Furthermore, it provides useful guidance and expert advice on how to leverage that knowledge to better safeguard your school community.
Our goal in sharing the guide is to help you and your fellow school stakeholders streamline daily communications and most importantly, take swift and effective action when you respond to an emergency.
#1 Understanding Your Unique School Safety Ecosystem Is Key
At Eastern DataComm, we take a holistic approach to school safety that begins with understanding your school safety ecosystem. This approach defines the interconnectedness between everything from your personnel and policy to your plans, procedures, and technology.
And as technology professionals who put safety first, we always connect with our clients to explore how their technology is helping them or hindering them from reaching the goals they’ve set for their schools and districts
While you can find a thorough explanation of the school safety ecosystem within the guide, the components that might be most familiar to you include:
- Paging systems, bell systems and clocks
- Video surveillance
- VoIP phones
- Access control
- Emergency notification solutions
We’ve listed these technology solutions separately above as each component has its own set of features. However, when they’re integrated with one another, their ability to keep your school community connected and protected is enhanced exponentially.
#2 Expert Insight Is Invaluable
While Eastern DataComm has decades of experience in helping schools just like yours keep their communities safe, we’re also a proud member of the Society of Communications Technology Consultants International’s Vendor Advisor Council, an organization that includes only experienced, rigorously vetted consultants.
Beyond our own experience, we also benefit from the network of professional relationships we’ve cultivated over the years, as well as the insight these respective collaborators share relative to their own fields of expertise. .
Therefore, in our Guide, you’ll hear from another industry expert, Three Corners Consulting’s Adam Drew. Adam is a certified School Resource Officer who has worked directly with school administrators, teachers, students, and parents on a variety of solutions to their school safety needs.
And as Adam shares in the guide,
“When our procedures are well-planned and executed, paging systems become a seamless part of our emergency response, facilitating clear and concise communication. This is the linchpin that keeps our school community informed and safe in everyday situations and, crucially, during active threats.”
– Adam Drew
Three Corners Consulting
#3 Real-Life Examples Help Us Create Our Own Best-Fit Solutions
As leaders in your school community, you already know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to campus safety. For this reason, our guide provides real-life case studies of schools that have implemented tailored strategies that keep their campus populations protected.
When we consider things like phone placement, repairing older technology, pre-recorded announcements, signs and beacons, and even video surveillance approaches, our team consults with school stakeholders to understand your needs and goals. This allows for a truly personalized approach to helping you stay connected and protected.
The examples we share in our guide highlight schools that did exactly that and reaped the benefits of practical, evidence-based solutions to their safety needs.
#4 Unique Populations require unique solutions
Communication only goes as far as the ability for that message to be acknowledged and understood. As such, part of our best practices guide addresses the importance of considering the varying sensory abilities of your population. We offer practical ways to ensure that you are integrating technology for the safety and security of all populations within your school or district.
From considering visual and auditory impairment to addressing how information is disseminated, our guide shares the ways your technology solutions can help everyone stay safe during an emergency.
#5: Integration Matters
As the guide explains, a holistic perspective on school safety allows you to see all the ways you can weave your technology solutions together to achieve your safety and security goals.
At Eastern DataComm, we believe that integration matters. And in practice, this belief takes many forms.
When we take a wide-lens view of your school safety ecosystem, we can define potentially avoidable areas of vulnerability and choose solutions that address those areas without relying on human intervention or on just one mode of communication alone.
In fact, our LENS + OPTICS system is an example of how integration can have a huge impact on your school’s safety and physical security. The solution offers a streamlined approach to protecting your buildings and grounds, as well as students, staff, and visitors who traffic your campus. Multiple modes of communication as well as technology systems are utilized like text and app notifications, LED beacons, audio notifications, push-button lockdown processes, phone and other scalable solutions to ensure your entire population, as well as law enforcement and first responders, are able to absorb and comprehend the emergency notification.
The result is a process that vastly reduces the chance for human error and puts school communities into lockdown faster than ever before.
Conclusion
There’s no substitute for a partner whose diagnostic and consultative approach helps you stay connected and protected. That process begins with understanding your school community’s areas of strength and need.
At Eastern DataComm, we’re passionate about sharing the best practices that will help you reach your school safety goals. Creating and sharing this guide is just one more way we live the commitment we’ve made to ensure the world is a safer place on account of the work we do.
… Because when it comes to school safety, we’re all in this together.
Download The Guide Today
If you’re interested in finding the right solutions for your school or district community’s safety and protection, download the guide here today.
