Crisis badges speed up alerts, enhance security level at CCS
Clinton Elementary School teaching assistant Kami Mor- gan and Principal Jenna Sharp wear badges that they and other staff can use to set off alarms. (photo:Ben Pounds )
By pressing the badge three times, staff can send an alert and map of the wearer’s location to desktops and mobile devices like phones and watches.
By pressing it eight times, a staff member can set off flashing lights and a lockdown warning. Staff members wear them around their necks.
The alarms are from the company Centegix.
Mary Ford, chief marketing officer for the company, promoted the devices at a recent event with Clinton Elementary School staff, showing off the devices and giving details on their use.
Kami Morgan, a special-education teaching assistant at the school, saw the Crisis Alert system’s ability firsthand in October 2022.
A student tried to run off the campus.
“I had to react very quickly to run and get to him,” Morgan said. “And in the heat of the moment, I left all my things lying down, and it was very convenient to have the badge to push. And I just clicked it nonstop the whole time that I was running, and I had the director of schools and the whole police department show up in what felt like a minute or two.”
Morgan said she felt safer with the badge.
“I really do love having it,” she said. “It’s easy, and I don’t have to think about whether I have my phone with me or how I’m going to respond to a situation, because it’s a set procedure and it’s with you all the time.”
Director of Clinton City Schools Kelly Johnson said staff installed the Crisis Alert system during the 2019-2020 school year.
The school system paid $62,000 for all three schools and continues to pay a $7,500 annual fee for software license and remote support.
“As directors of schools and any educator, the most important thing that we can do is deliver children back into the hands of their parents at the end of the day,” she said.
She said she had worked in the aftermath of a school shooting in another school district before working in Clinton.
”We know that the faster the response can be, the safer our children are going to be,” Johnson said.