LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A school gunman killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School on Wednesday.
But there are some who say more people could have died if not for the fast response of school resource officers and an alert system the school just started using in the last week or so.
“Without a doubt in my mind I think this program that Apalachee instilled upon us 100% saved lives. Without a doubt in my mind. I recommend it to any school district,” said Apalachee High School teacher Stephen Kreyenbuhl.
The program the teacher is referring to is an alert system from Centegix. The system notified the school of the emergency. School resource officers quickly found the suspect and detained him and stopped him from taking more lives.
CCSD Police say CCSD is going into its second year of using the Centegix system and explained to FOX5 in August how it works.
“All the staff member has to do is push the button a certain amount of times. One alarm will make it known that that person needs assistance. And then if you continue to hit it a certain amount of times then it will put the school into what’s being called now a hold, which basically is a hard lockdown,” said CCSD Lt. Bryan Zink.
Zink added, “It used to be that if a teacher needed a hard lockdown they’d have to run over and grab the phone in the corner of the room, dial a number to the main office or say hard lockdown.”
Zink says its dispatch center is notified when badges are pushed, and this activates a map of the school which comes up on a board. The department will know exactly who activated the badge, with each badge assigned to a CCSD staff member.
The Lt. says every staff member in the district has the badges. He says they were used more than 1700 times last year. They can also be used to summon help for medical emergencies. Centegix says 600,000 badges are currently in use today.
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