But schools in New Hampshire will soon be the beneficiaries of an emergency alert system that could save lives — and they are getting it for free.
Safety Alerts For Education (SAFE) is a platform that allows alerts to be sent to mobile phones within a designated area. The alerts could be generated by police or the school and the communication is two-way, allowing discussion about what the dangers are and providing law enforcement with some situational awareness. It allows anyone with the app to provide input into the situation.
Students, staff and parents will be able to download the app at safeschoolapp.com anonymously when it becomes available. The deployment will be a gift from the developer, Ping4, but it looks like some local businesses will be contributing funds for training and support.
“For me, the SAFE app is a solution that is ready to be implemented and something that should be instituted in all schools across the country as soon as possible,” former Manchester, N.H., Police Chief Nick Willard said in a video.
Ping4 CEO James Bender said after the shootings at Parkland in Florida and the ensuing protests, the idea hit him “between the eyes.” The technology is used by government agencies, including emergency management agencies, but not in schools.
Why not donate the technology to make schools safer, he thought. “Students are saying their schools aren’t as safe as they should be and we as adults need to do more,” Bender said. “To whatever degree the students and faculty don’t feel their schools are safe, they’re not going to be learning as well as they could be or teaching as well as they could be.”
There are a lot of “solutions” being talked about but no real viable solutions in the offing. “However you might feel about gun control and even the most obvious things like teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to buy AR-15s, you’re never going to get a national consensus,” Bender said. “Better mental health care for teenagers, that’s not going to happen in the next 10 years and we’ve got a problem that’s accelerating right now.”
Bender said he’d like to give the product away to more school districts, but the problem is supporting and training tens of thousands of non-revenue customers. He said he could equip all of the 140,000 schools within the 15,000 school districts nationally for $5 million. “If someone is willing to come in and fund the whole thing, I could announce a nationwide rollout by the end of the year.”
Bender said Massachusetts is probably the next venue for rollout, depending on the help he can get to fund training and support. “To the extent that we’re successful [in getting corporations, foundations and individuals to contribute] we’re going to roll this out as fast as we’re able to get help.”
SAFE may not prevent incidents from occurring, but it could provide critical communications during a crisis “where communication is important and the value of having a few seconds’ warning could be the difference between whether an individual lives or dies,” Bender said.
“A lot of the people who’ve been killed in these situations have been killed because it came as a complete surprise to them,” he said. “We think we’re giving the gift of information, not only to the students and faculty and staff who work in these buildings but to the police who have to get control of these situations.”
