Sonitrol and Send Word Now to Offer Emergency Notification for Schools

Send Word Now, a leading provider of on-demand alerting and response services, has partnered with Sonitrol to offer emergency notification for the Education Market. This service will be added to Sonitrol's Safe Schools portfolio that includes its unique audio intrusion product, CCTV, monitored video, wireless panic buttons, access control, ID cards / badging and fire detection solutions.Through its Safe Schools initiative, Sonitrol has worked with the educational community for over 40 years to build a safe and secure learning environment. Today, Sonitrol is one of the largest providers of school security systems in North America, serving more than 12,000 school locations. The addition of 2-way emergency alerting and response enables schools to alert teachers, administrators, parents, students and first responders of security issues via multiple modes of contact.

The SWN Alert Service from Sonitrol gives schools the ability to handle emergency situations within minutes with literally the touch of a button. The system is designed to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime, with any device over any type of connection. Each individual can provide the best ways to contact them including mobile, home or office phones, email, pagers, BlackBerry devices, Treos other PDAs. School administrators can securely initiate an alert from the web, phone, email, BlackBerry or internal information system application, and can verify and track whether the alert was received and whether a response was made.

Schools and universities are increasingly vulnerable to crime and violence. According to Sonitrol's research, a school is three times more likely to be burglarized than a business, and vandalism costs schools more than $1 billion a year. In addition, according to the National Education Association, during every hour of every school day, 900 teachers are threatened and more than 2,000 students and nearly 40 teachers are physically attacked on school grounds. Of the 1,911 apprehensions Sonitrol made in 2006, 895 were at school facilities.

Send Word Now works with scores of educational institutions across the nation, including Boston University (BU), Tufts University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), New York University (NYU) and University of California, San Francisco (U of C), in order to increase campus safety. By partnering with Sonitrol, Send Word Now will greatly expand its reach to the thousands of elementary, middle and high schools that currently are protected by Sonitrol.

"Today, more than ever, schools need to incorporate emergency alerting and response capabilities into their overall emergency preparedness plans," said Alex Gellman, president of Sonitrol. "We view the SWN Alert Service as a natural extension to our Safe Schools portfolio, giving us the ability to satisfy the increasing demand from our school customers."

"Sonitrol is one of the largest providers of school security systems in North America," said Send Word Now's CEO Tom Shoemaker. "We are confident that together, Send Word Now and Sonitrol have the industry expertise and technology know-how to bring rapid and effective communication to schools in the event of a crisis or other time-sensitive situations."