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.
Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School District agreed to spend up to $8.2 million on an incident alert system districtwide after testing the devices in a few schools over the summer.
The CCSD School Board approved a two-year contract, with five single-year options to extend, on Thursday with Centegix, the maker of the wearable badge-style panic buttons tested during summer school at nine high schools.
The board approved the item with no discussion.
The contract breaks out to $5,360,000 for the first year and $2.8 million total for years two through, potentially, seven. According to a one-page bid award recommendation, the Centegix system will be used by “all schools and departments” throughout the district.
The badges are part of a broader investment in school safety after several high-profile acts of campus violence that gripped CCSD last year, including the beating and sexual assault of an Eldorado High School teacher in her classroom after school.
The Centegix CrisisAlert badges will allow staffers to summon police and trigger campuswide audio and visual announcements of a lockdown with a few clicks of a button. CCSD tested them at Mojave, Basic, Clark, Durango, Centennial, Cheyenne, Del Sol, Liberty and Palo Verde high schools. Separately, the six-week pilot cost $100,000.
The system has two modes, triggered by pressing the button in different patterns: an emergency where police and lockdown are needed, like a shooting, 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.
The system works by sending a Wi-Fi signal to the nearest proprietary repeater — several are installed around campus, powered by long-lasting batteries — that activates strobes and pinpoints the badge’s location for front office staff or police.
CCSD rolled out its first set of panic buttons in April at Eldorado High School, not long after the teacher attack. The Eldorado alert system was not the same system ultimately selected for wider use.
CCSD has spent about $39.7 million at 13 high schools so far funneling campuses down to single points of entry, upgrading surveillance cameras and erecting additional fencing. Most of that money – $26.3 million – has been at Eldorado.
