TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Kids are heading back into classrooms and safety is top of mind for many school districts, including the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD).
Joe Hallums, TUSD Director of Safety and Security, says they are implementing a new system call Centegix.
Starting this school year, all TUSD teachers and staff will be able to call for assistance by pressing a panic button on their badge three times.
“So whether that be a medical situation, a disruptive student, a suspicious person, whatever the case may be, with three simple pushes of a button, they can request help from the other individuals who may be on that site who are identified as responders," said Hallums.
Those responders could be an administrator or school nurse, who will then get a notification on their phone or desktop with a map showing who needs help and where they’re located.
For more serious situations like active threats on campus, the button must be pressed multiple times.
“They’re trained to press the button until they see reaction and the strobes will go off. If the school’s set up for it, which we’re working on ensuring all of our schools are, the intercom system will go on and we’ll have a screen takeover and that’ll initiate a lockdown at the site," said Hallums.
For these alerts, law enforcement is notified and will respond.
"We are directly tied into the Tucson Police Department, Pima County Sheriff's Department, the Pascua Yaqui Police Department, and the security forces on Davis-Monthan," said Hallums.
Each strobe color has a different meaning. Blue means secure, red means lockdown, green means evacuate, and orange means shelter.
This safety measure is installed in all 87 schools plus all of TUSD support sites, which equates to over 100 sites - and the button can only be activated when on TUSD property.
Michael Beck, Catalina High School Assistant Principal, says he is a big fan of Centegix.
“It’s a great way to get the resources that you need as quickly as you possibly can before those horrible situations we hope we never get into," Beck said.
Sally Reeves, grandparent of Avery Vargas who’s heading to third grade, says she’s happy to hear about this technology.
“I am so thrilled that they’re rolling this out and taking proactive steps to keep our kids safe, so that’s wonderful," Reeves said. "I mean if we have kids on the playground with asthma or whatever and they have an episode, we've got something where we can have help immediately. "
According to Hallums, the price tag of this security system is a $5 million contract for five years, so $1 million per year.
"While a heavy investment, the piece of mind that this gives our staff is well worth that investment. Again, the last thing we want is a staff member facing some kind of situation and not be able to get that assistance they need. This gives every staff member, no matter where they are in any of our campuses, whether they're assigned to that site or not, if they're on a TUSD site - they can push three times and get help."
Centegix is anticipated to rollout the first day of school on Monday.
Another safety implementation to TUSD schools is putting a Safe Haven Defense riot control laminate on windows.
“What that’s designed to do is significantly slow anybody from being able to force entry into one of our sites, especially when our students and staff are there," Hallums said. "After hours it prevents break ins. Now is it impossible to get through? No. But it's gonna take a significant amount of time and significant amount of effort to be able to breach that window that's protected with that window film."
TUSD says the film has already prevented a recent break-in at Whitmore Elementary School.
Someone tried to break the window, but the film prevented entrance to the building.
According to TUSD, you could not feel the break from the inside.
TUSD compares this to an incident that happened about a month ago. The Duffy Clothing Bank did not have the protective film on the windows and was broken into. TUSD says individuals were able to get in and resulted in great damages and losses, including multiple broken windows and some water damage.
The cost of the the Safe Haven Defense is covered by the TUSD Bond 2023.
The first phase of installation will be done at all elementary schools.
"Because those are our most vulnerable students and unfortunately history shows that most of the incidents that occur at elementary sites occur from the outside in," Hallums said.
Because of the success of the product, TUSD will move forward and install the film in middle and high schools.
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Vanessa Gongora is KGUN 9's Westside reporter.. Vanessa fell in love with storytelling by growing up in sports. She was fascinated by how sports reporters go beyond the x's & o's to tell players' stories, and how sports bring people together, inspiring Vanessa to provide the same impact as a journalist. Share your story ideas and important issues with Vanessa by emailing vanessa.gongora@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
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