Seeing Through the Smoke of School Safety Products

There's this facade out there amongst schools. You go to Texas School Safety Center, you go to you know, all of these, TASA, TASB, TASBO, you know, any of these state, conferences and you've got all of these companies there, these venture capital backed companies that are promoting products that are unproven. They're theoretically based and in fact none of them have actually been used in a crisis. It's the truth. Right? But I don't want to say their names, but there's just been this huge push throughout the United States for silent panic alarms, which came out of Florida. You know, based upon Alyssa's law, Texas has now adopted that. The schools have to have a silent panic alarm. I wanna talk about body worn versus hard button, one. Two, I wanna talk about the practicality of this stuff because what we're starting to see is a politicians, they get sold this bill of sale by venture capital groups who have lobbyists that come and talk to them and sit before the senate and talk to them about how their product, their unproven product is going to save lives. A body worn panic button, how it's gonna save lives. It's not. Listen to me. It's not going to save any lives. What it's going to do is going to sound an alarm like it should. But the theory behind it is is that when that alarm is sounded, then it's gonna go to a dispatch center. The dispatcher who's now inundated with nine one one calls and dispatching up to sixty different law enforcement entities who are all responding to the same scene, not all on the same radio station or radio channel, is then going to log into the system, which has initiated this this this panic. And then they're gonna pull up the system, see where it came from, dispatch officers to that exact location. They're going to then engage the camera systems and then monitor the camera systems as all this stuff is going on. Answer the phones, dispatch the officers. It's not going to happen. Stop buying this crap. Okay? It's crap. If you wanna put in a silent panic alarm system that works, put in a hardwired system, establish a standard throughout every one of your campuses. So that if I go from one campus to the next campus and there's an incident on that campus that I'm not familiar with, I know where that silent panic alarm is that that in the event that I have to send someone or request someone, I know where it is. Body worn body worn or just it's just a terrible idea. Stop being sold a bill of goods that hasn't really been proven. It's so bad. It's so bad. Right? And so there's so many things that that aren't taken into account. So I'm gonna jump in on the technical side of why it's a bad idea. Wireless pairing buttons, there's no such thing as wireless. At some point, everything has to connect to a wire. Right? So in order for a wireless panic button to work, you have to put in the infrastructure within the school in order to make it work. It's not inexpensive. You're running cable. You have to put in, receivers. They only have so much of a range. But that's not what is is in the mind of the people who are buying them or using them. Right? So let's get back to statistics. Where does where do the predominant amount of, incidents happen? Exterior. Exterior. So you've now invested in this infrastructure that's all around Interior. In the inside of the building. My notes. And you have somebody who's wearing a painting button and let's say that there happen to be out in the parking lot and they can be pressing the button till they're blue in the face, it's not gonna do anything. The button doesn't give you feedback necessarily to let you know that it went off. These buttons aren't supervised. The reason why they're not supervised is because they know that people are going to take them home, so they don't want it to go into alarm or trouble. Right? And so, you know, years ago, we went through this. Like, let's let's go back decades again. Like I said, seen a thing or two. Yeah. Yep. Type of thing. When when when, like, stop and goes, when those were around, right, they turned into stop and robs. Right? People were were robbing them left and right, and and that was a big thing at that time. They wanted to have body worn panic buttons on their corpse. Right? And so this became a thing for every gas station. How come you don't see gas station tenants today wearing pay button? It didn't work. Because it was awful. It was a nightmare. Right? So if you're going to supervise it, that means it has to stay within range. I gotta know that it's there and then I can check the battery level to make sure that it's working right. Well, somebody now goes home for the day and they're still wearing it. The entire system is in trouble because now there's a device that's missing. So that generates phone calls, that generates service, person comes on shift next, doesn't have the panic button because the previous guy took it home and forgot about it, and now we have somebody who doesn't have one. Right? They get nasty from being worn all the time. They get broken. Right? Batteries go out. They get lost. Well, but we have a free battery replacement program if you buy our system, I think. There's nothing free. It's just built into the cost. Correct. Right? And so, what do what do gas stations have today? They have a pairing button. It's physically mounted. It's attached. It's in in all of the contain the convenience stores. Why did they do that? Because the wireless payment buttons were a disaster. This is the exact same thing. Right? It's just on a much larger scale. And so then what's what I love about it is when you're talking to one of the, you know, executive staff, executive directors, you talk to a superintendent, you talk an IED director, and you go, what are you gonna do about your substitutes? And the look on their face, like, panic. And then they don't realize that in two thousand nineteen in SB eleven, they made it a requirement that substitutes training, training, training, same resources, everything. Everything. And they still well, it's twenty twenty four. And they still don't know. Or five years later. And and no one is is holding these people accountable that aren't doing that. Right? Flo Rice was a catalyst behind that, who was shot five times in Santa Fe as a substitute, who didn't have the resources that full time employees has. No keys. No nothing. Five years later after after Santa Fe, the forgotten shooting, and Nothing's changed. No one is there's a law that's there, but what happens if you don't follow it? Well, we know what happens. After you've already during the testimony, we knew that only two hundred out of eleven hundred districts had even been compliant with s b eleven. One was punished. One. One. So what's the motivation for doing the right thing? So technically, it's a disaster. Right? The reality is is that teachers aren't gonna they'll they'll carry it for a little bit just like all other things. They'll get tired of it. They'll forget. It'll be left at home. They'll put it in their desk drawer. They get piled on with a whole bunch of other stuff. Right? And then the emergency happens, and then it becomes a scavenger hunt of where do where is it. And they're gonna be panic shop searching for where this is at. There are so many better ideas on how to handle this that make sense. Right? The one that I personally prefer is is updating intercoms. Right? So the intercom call button can do advanced features. One of the reasons why I I like this is that when we do, if you look at any of the after action reports, one of the things that is always there is there was no way to adequately communicate an emergency across campus. The intercom systems were broken. Why did they pull the pool station at Santa Fe? Because there was no way to to to, communicate the emergency to everybody. Right? And so time and time and time and time and time and time again, we see that comms are always a problem. And so this is a way that you can accomplish both at the same time. We can get your inter your intercom, your mass communication system upgraded. At the same time, you can have a panic button that does everything that's compliant with Alissa's law. It's in the same place in every single classroom. Everybody knows where it's at. It always works. It's it's on backup power. It's there in the classroom. All of those things. You don't have to worry about batteries. It solves all of the issues. Take a moment. Don't just buy the sales pitch. Understand what's there and come up with a lot of I think we have to talk about realism too. I mean, how realistic is it for a dispatcher to be able to sit there and answer? I mean, because let's let's look at this. Eighty percent of school districts in the United States are rural. So I will tell you this, There is technology coming. There is technology out that's being slowly adopted. Where we really see it is in real time crime centers. Right? The big major cities are investing in it, and they can add they can add cameras from different facilities where they do have access to it, and they can pair incoming nine one one calls to the actual Right. Video that's associated. That is not at a nine one one dispatch level. And that is definitely not at a nine one one dispatch level for rural America. Right? Major metropolitan cities that have real time crime centers, sure, that have the budget but not do it. Not South Texas where you were last week. Not. Not even close. Not even I mean Not even close. Not even Southwest ISD where we just were. It But even one dispatcher. Even in South Texas where I was at, in that situation, in that room, there were seven different agencies all on different frequencies. Right? And so even in rural rural rural Texas, that's that was reality. So just the comms problem. They but they're not thinking of that. And and the problem the the where where it irritates me is that our team goes in, we do a very deep dive of a district's needs or a client. It doesn't have to be a district. We're in multiple different verticals, but we do a very deep dive and we identify all the vulnerabilities and then we provide solutions to mitigate them within reason. I talk about the three f's. That's the foundation, the framework and the finishes. Right? The foundation is, you know, your emergency operations plan, your emergency action plan for every campus because they're different. Right? It's your your digital maps. It's your mass communication. It's the training of your staff, in behavioral threat detection, identifying those seven early warning signs. It's training them in you know stop the bleed, chest seal application, having the situational awarenesses, you know, all of those things. That's the foundation. Then we move into the framework where we take all that technology and we make it work with the foundation, then we take the finishes and those are the little small, you know, things that we use as a, you know, perhaps as a, an add on. Right? We talk about we talk about this all the time. This is one of those things that I that will be comes up all the time. And and there's a ton of those people out there that are in there in the industry, gunshot detection. How many times have we been asked for gunshot detection in a school whose perimeter doors don't even Don't even lock. Yeah. Don't even lock. Nope. Right. We need gunshot detection. You already have it? I do? Yeah. There's two of them right here. Yeah. It's right here. It's your ears, you know. Well, and not only that, but like, gunshot detection has an application. It has a place. It does. And and I'm interior schools though. Well, even if it is inter let's say that you have money is not an object and that's actually one of the things that you wanna do. Okay. Great. But in the list of priorities. Right? That doesn't come before a plan. When you talk about foundation, framework, finishes, I call it baking the cake. They're trying to decorate a cake that hasn't ever even been baked yet. Right? You can't put icing on a cake that hasn't been baked. And so let's start with the basics. Let's start with training your staff. Let's talk about locking doors. Let's let's talk about the same thing is with the, the gun recognition systems. Right? All these companies that are coming out with, oh, well, we're gonna monitor your cameras and then we see somebody with a gun, we're gonna do these things. Okay. Well, do you even have cameras on the perimeter of your building? Like, let's let's look at what you have. And you're like, even if you wanted to add the service, it there's no way to realistically do that because you have inadequate camera coverage. Let's start with that before you start trying to subscribe to a service on the handful of cameras that you have now. Right? Let's let's get the basics done. Well, we've been in a bunch of different schools that it just it infuriates me. They've they've either already spent the money or they're planning to spend the money on these particular types of of technologies. They don't even have a plan in place. They have no reunification plan. They have no emergency action plans. Well, there's a there's what I call it an invasive species of product, and and and they're preying on schools, in my opinion. And so they did not offer panic buttons. Right? Wireless panic buttons. And so in order to get people to their, their product, they quickly threw together wireless payment buttons and made it work in their application so that they can say, now you already have it, and we just need you to add on all of this other technology. Because now you've already you already have the system. You already have the framework. And it and and in some cases, they're significantly discounting it just to get their foot in the door, and it is they are preying upon these. Yeah and then the next year you have this exorbitant subscription fee. Massive. You know? And and schools can't afford that. Right. I I remember when I got there, my budget was I think a hundred and fifty thousand. What's crazy though? Let's talk about that for a second. We already talked about these schools that are having these massive deficits. Yeah. Right? These schools that have subscribed to these services. Right? Where they have to pay an annual agreement for their cameras, for their access control. Now some of them are trying to do intrusion. Now you add on the silent panic buttons and everything else. You turn around and go, I had to make cuts. I I can't pay you. Sorry. You have a three year agreement. Right. Okay. Well, I physically don't have the money. We don't have the resources. But what happens to your services? You just you just bought all these cameras. You just bought all these doors access control. If you don't make that payment, what do you think happens to them? Do they still work? No. No. You have no help. That's what I'm saying. Right? Yeah. And and sometimes people don't realize these things that they're the the companies that they're jumping into bed with and they're doing it. And so many times when we're competitively against somebody, I feel like the majority of the time we are having to educate people on Well, but I can tell you though, like, we can but we've sat and you know, some of these out east that way a little bit refining town sat and we've educated them. This is why you should not do this. This is going to cost you more money in the long run. You know, listen, you don't have to buy our product, but we're telling you, you shouldn't buy this one. Right. You know, because this is why, and they still do it. Right. You know, it's Well, and and so that that particular, situation, right, ultimately, the board relied a hundred percent on the On the IT director. And in this case, the IT director was extremely new. Right? And and and very, very young, very new to the industry. And this invasive species of product had had wined and dined and had sold her on it. And there was absolutely no way that she would recommend anybody else but that one there. Being being, you know, former government employee and then being on a school board, it's amazing what people will do for a twenty five dollar flashlight or a cup or, you know, a whole bag of just like pens and crap, you know it's amazing or or steak dinner a steak dinner oh they took us out to dinner we have to go to them bullshit let's go with whoever's the best. I mean I'll eat their steak, but I'm not obligated, you know, but it's amazing, you know, and it's there's there's this this big lobby effort is crap. It's absolutely crap. You know, it's something needs to be done about that. This this dish or this, this industry has to be regulated to some extent because right now it is the Wild West and money is being frivolously spent on all kinds of nonsense that hasn't even been proven to even work yet. Well, and what's interesting is in the state of Texas, we were almost, what little regulation we do have, almost went away a couple years ago when they were going, you know, doing their sunset committee of deregulation new. State of Texas lost, its plumbing license. So you can now be a plumber Without having a license. Plumbing license is no longer regulated by the state. Sounds like a shitty situation. Absolutely. It sounds like things could wake back up or something. You know? It it well, I mean, it a lot of people don't realize the implications to that. But imagine you're building a a home or, you know, say a big building. Right? And so, you know, plumbing starts at the foundation level. Right? And so it's in the concrete. Right? It's there. If you do it wrong. Right? You're done. You you're you're busting it wrong. Right? You have major problems. And so, just like we're talking about, this is a perfect, you know, similarity here about schools. You gotta have the right foundation. Right? And, when it comes to to security. And unfortunately, many people are spending money on finishes, and they don't have the baseline of the foundation. And I'll tell you this. For those of you that wanna use the three f's, the foundation, the framework, and the finishes, I'll sell you that for five ninety nine a month. Right? You like that, right? Alright. Well good deal. Well let's let's wrap this one up and figure out what we're gonna talk about next. Take a little break. Alright. Thanks.