Company demonstrates security software for school officials

February 16, 2007
by Ruth Campbell
Midland Reporter-Telegram

Computer software for what could be a state and national model for school security was introduced to administrators and law enforcement officials at the Region 18 Education Service Center on Thursday.

The Region 18 Permian Basin Safety Net has been awarded a $656,780 Emergency Response and Crisis Management grant through the U.S. Department of Education. Representatives from Tacoma, Wash.-based Prepared Response did the demonstration.

Before the so-named Rapid Responder program goes live in September, the company will insert photos and pertinent information from each campus, including census at different times of day, entrances, hazardous materials and personnel.

Starting next week, Prepared Response will also hold training sessions at the district and school level, bringing in law enforcement and fire officials, Prepared Response Vice President of Professional Services Marti Wagner said.

Much of the information on the Internet would not be available to the public, but some would be available for parents, Region 18 Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Technology Jim Collett said.

Region 18 is the fiscal agent for the grant, initially announced in August 2006.

Along with Region 18, districts included in the grant are MISD, Coahoma, Big Spring, Stanton, Monahans and Pecos-Barstow-Toyah. Collett said school districts already have emergency plans in place, but the Web site will make it accessible to first responders 24 hours a day, seven days a week so they can react more quickly, decisively and safely to emergencies.

"We've always had crisis management plans in place and we have to update those constantly and we've done it by hand," Executive Director of Auxiliary Services Wilson Heidelberg said. Now the district will take it into the computer age.

"We'll all have the same crisis management plans. We will hopefully coordinate and keep up to date," he said.

Region 18 consultant Denise Rives, a project coordinator with Collett and Andy Sustaita, said this is the only region in the state that will have anything similar to this software. "This will be a state model and possibly a national model because it hasn't been done before. The closest is Washington state," which has mapped its high schools, she said.

Rives said the education service center hopes to include other districts in the grant. "We hope to have all the data live by September. What will be left of the grant is for training, critical response and pandemic flu," she said.

According to Rives, health officials say it's not a matter of if but when for the invasion of bird flu. "We've got to do some contingency planning for mass care. It will have to be the whole community planning to anticipate and prepare for that incident," she said.