Few electronic alert messages sent last year from a widely-used system in Florida schools — created years after the Parkland school shooting — were related to a safety threat on campus, a new report found.
Of the more than 54,000 alerts sent from a widely-used crisis alert system in Florida schools last school year, according to the report, nearly half — or 44% — were related to student behavior. Only 1% of alerts were related to suspicious activity and another 1% for a campus threat. About 23% were for practice drills and 13% to test the system.
Alyssa’s Law, a Florida law that more than a dozen states have also adopted, required public schools to implement mobile panic alert systems that send real-time location to first responders.
The law is named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victim Alyssa Alhadeff, daughter of Broward County School Board member Lori Alhadeff. The student was among 18 people killed by a gunman on Feb. 14, 2018, in one of the nation's worst mass shootings.
Alhadeff praised the mobile panic alert system's effectiveness.
“In Broward County Public Schools, the panic button is used around 900 times per month,” Alhadeff told WLRN. “ The teachers, they feel safer. The students feel safer knowing that help is on the way.”
The button is capable of sending two types of alerts. Pressing it three times signifies the teacher or school employee needs help and a security guard or nurse, for example, will make their way over to the exact location of the alert. When pressed eight times, the alert goes to law enforcement and medical dispatchers for immediate attention needed on campus.
The wearable panic button for school staff is made by CENTEGIX, which also compiled the report.
The system is “extremely important” in scenarios when students are out of line “to help deescalate situations," which has resulted in fewer suspensions and detentions, Alhadeff said.
The alert system is used by 53% of Florida public schools. It’s most deployed in elementary schools, followed by middle schools and high schools.
Alhadeff said there has only been one incident of a teacher pressing the button eight times — and it was by mistake.
“ Knowing that the teacher has the ability to get help and specifically to their classroom [by] using that panic button, it's just so vitally important and the students absolutely believe that this is making an impact and making a difference,” Alhadeff said.
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Alhadeff has served on the Broward school board — the nation' sixth-largest — since 2018, including serving as its chair. She announced earlier this year that she will not seek a third term in office and endorsed longtime educator and fellow Parkland resident Sharry Kimmel to replace her for the District 4 seat, which spans Parkland, Coral Springs, Tamarac and North Lauderdale.
" I hope to pass Alyssa's Act at the federal level, which will create standards around emergency response for the panic buttons in digital mapping, but I know that I'm making a difference every day that I'm on this," she said reflecting on the legacy she's leaving behind.
Precise location
The report also says 40% of alerts came from rooms on campus. The majority of alerts, 60%, came from playgrounds, athletic fields, hallways and campus spaces.
When students are “passing and they're moving” through the school, “that is a high time when behavior issues arise and some physical altercations can break out,” said Stacy Meyer vice president of marketing for strategics at CENTEGIX.
Meyer explained that traditional alert systems are a button mounted on a classroom wall or installed in a teacher’s phone. Teachers wear the panic button, which sounds like an Amber alert, and has geolocation technology that informs responders the exact location, indoor or outdoor, of the call.
“ It's wonderful that no matter where you are on the campus, you're always wearing the badge that is going to let you get help and signal to whomever it is on the responding end that, ‘Hey, I'm out on the playground and something has happened,’” Meyer said.
Broward and Palm Beach County school districts have adopted the system. Miami-Dade County is in a pilot phase. The data in the report wasn’t broken down by district.
