A wearable single button badge, part of a CENTEGIX CrisisAlert system, is displayed during a demonstration at Mojave High School in North Las Vegas Thursday, June 2, 2022.
Thursday, June 2, 2022 | 5:22 p.m.
The newest style of wearable instant alert systems for teachers in the Clark County School District is a badge that lets them summon police and trigger campuswide audio and visual announcements of a lockdown with a few clicks of a button.
The district is piloting the badges — or panic buttons — during summer school at nine high school campuses around the valley, officials said during a media demonstration of the new system today at Mojave High School.
In a lecture hall decorated in Mojave green and orange, Principal Greg Cole discreetly and repeatedly pressed the button on a plain gray badge about the size of a credit card. This is what happened next:
A jarring tone blared over the intercom system and a strobe light mounted on the ceiling flashed red beams. “Hard lockdown,” a computerized voice intoned. “Hard lockdown. Hard lockdown.”
Superintendent Jesus Jara said it was important enough to quickly shift some general funds to try out the system, called the Centegix CrisisAlert badge, for a six-week trial.
“This is a priority,” he said. “Our children and our staff need to be safe.”
The test run will cost the district $100,350 for the summer, district spokesman Tod Story said.
The district will go out to bid for a permanent wearable alert solution after the summer pilots, which also includes a test run of a different system at Eldorado High School, Jara said.
The Centegix system is already in operation at Mojave, Basic, Clark and Durango high schools. Centennial, Cheyenne, Del Sol, Liberty and Palo Verde will get it in the next few days. Every adult staffer at the test sites is equipped with a device.
Cole said the system is a reassuring added tool, “knowing that even though we have good procedures in place for emergencies, if we’re not able to access somebody right away, that I have a way to call 911.”
The person calling for help only needs to press the button, without speaking or opening an app. It sends a Wi-Fi signal to the nearest proprietary repeater — several are installed around campus, powered by long-lasting batteries — that then communicates with the strobes and pinpoints the badge’s location for front office staff or police. Schematics on front office computers and nearby police officers who are connected to the system.
The system has two modes, triggered by pressing the button in different patterns: an emergency where police and lockdown are needed, like a shooting, as demonstrated by the principal; and a scenario where only a building administrator is requested, such as a playground injury or fistfight.
When used to put a school in lockdown, the program takes over the building’s public address system to give prerecorded audio cues. A less-severe “staff alert” does not trigger the schoolwide alarms. Badges can communicate with receivers at any school, and work inside or outside.
It’s a different system from the one put into place in April at Eldorado, not long after a 16-year-old student allegedly beat and sexually assaulted a teacher in her classroom after school. That attack shocked staff, students and families in what was already a record year for reports of campus violence that educators and people in the juvenile justice system have said was more brutal than typical.
At Eldorado, district staff added a program onto wearable microphones that were already in use creating a prompt solution. They said at the time that a sweeping review of campus security was underway and improvements could take years to fully implement in CCSD’s roughly 350 schools countywide.
Additional security measures could include more alert systems, funneling campuses down to single points of entry, upgrading surveillance cameras and erecting additional fencing. Classrooms may already have hardwired intercom systems and landline phones.
