Making schools safer

April 12, 2007
by Steve Reagan
Big Spring Herald

BIG SPRING , Texas--Big Spring and Coahoma are two of six school districts that will be the beneficiaries of a federal grant aimed at making schools safer.

As part of the grant, those two school districts, along with Stanton and three others along the Interstate 20 corridor, will receive a technology package aimed at quickening response time to emergencies.

The $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education will allow officials to install Rapid Responder, a computer-based program developed by Prepared Response, which will help police, fire department and other emergency personnel pinpoint vital response points on the campuses before they even arrive on scene, said officials with the Region 18 Educational Service Center, which is overseeing the program’s inception.

“Say that there’s a fire at the high school here,” said Andy Sustaita of Region 18. “Administrators can get the information to everyone almost instantaneously ... Responders will know the quickest route to respond to the fire and they’ll know if there’s any hazardous material or chemicals to worry about.”

Region 18 officials have already met with emergency response personnel in the respective cities and hope to have the program up and running at all six school districts by May, Sustaita said.

The respective schools were chosen for the grant because of possible vulnerabilities to disasters — both natural and man-made, said Denise Rives of Region 18.

“Big Spring, for example, was chosen because of the interstate and the railroad being nearby. Also, you have the refinery and five prison facilities in the area,” Rives said.

“With the world we live in, we need to be proactive,” she added. “We’ve learned that terrorists are going to attack the most vulnerable targets that will garner the most attention, and schools are prime targets for those kinds of attacks.”

Other school districts involved in the project are Midland, Monahans and Pecos.

Big Spring Independent School District Superintendent Michael Downes welcomed the new program.

“We have an emergency response program in place, but this takes that to a whole new level,” Downes said. “This provides much more safety in the form of response time.”