GREENWOOD, Ind. — Center Grove Schools is entering its first full school year with a new high-tech safety partner.
Centegix CrisisAlert, purchased in part with school safety grant money, pairs with their Emergency Operations Center that opened in January. The CrisisAlert program literally puts security at the fingertips of all teachers and staff.
Both systems address what the district learned it had to work on from a school safety assessment back in 2018 - live monitoring and faster response times in an emergency.
When kids go back to class in Center Grove Wednesday, 700 smart cameras will be scanning for safety in and around every single school, looking for danger or anything suspicious with real-time tracking from the district's Emergency Operations Center.
"It's eyes in the sky, basically," explained Lynn Williams, SSO and Integrated Training Specialist.
If there is a threat, teachers and staff now can get help much faster, with the push of a button on a badge.
It's essentially a wearable panic button that everyone carries on a lanyard.
"It's just like their ID cards. It fits in the same pouch that their ID cards fit in," explained Center Grove Assistant Superintendent of Operations Bill Long.
"Before, we'd have to reach for a radio, our cell phone, get somebody else to run for something. You press the button and all of that's coming - right now," added Center Grove Middle School Central Principal Craig Smith.
Center Grove bought the Centegix CrisisAlert system with help from a school safety grant through the Indiana Department of Homeland Security late last spring. It can activate for things like medical emergencies, fights in the halls and active shooters. If there's an intruder, for example, staff can trigger a lockdown immediately.
"When that happens, everything's lighting up - lights, sirens, computers are getting taken over, voice is telling us where to go," Smith said. "And then we know police are on the way."
The "code red" in classrooms elicits a rapid response in the operations center from police.
"It pops up on a map, shows us what room it is and what teacher pushed the button and we can get them help," Long explained. "We can talk the sheriff's department and our own police department into the exact room and what floor."
"I'm going to be able to follow them through the hallway and, in the meantime, I'm going to be feeding that information to our officers," Williams added.
This system can actually be used for more than just lockdowns. Instant alerts are color-coded, based on the emergency and students and staff are trained to know which color strobe light means what.
During severe weather, for example, a blue strobe means there's a tornado.
A green strobe? An earthquake.
School leaders say the system is a game changer: peace of mind that in crisis, help is a few clicks away.
"It gives us a sense of security," Smith said. "It's like an insurance policy, you just know it's there."
Center Grove used the $100,000 school safety grant it received in 2021 to pay a third of the cost of the Centegix CrisisAlert system. The school board paid the remaining cost.
Last year, IDHS awarded a total of $19 million dollars in school safety grants to nearly 400 school districts.
The next round of grants for 2022 will be announced in September.
To see if your school received a grant in 2021, and for how much, you can check this interactive database: