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With the recent school intruders in Massachusetts, we are seeing a renewed sense of urgency for school safety and security nationwide. Thankfully, the schools in these incidents have strong visitor management policies and prevented the unauthorized visitors from gaining access.
Unfortuntately, not all districts have modern visitor management. Outdated pen-and-paper visitor logs create security gaps and emergency response systems limited to one-way alerting communications fail to provide staff and responders with critical information during an incident.
Updating these systems and processes to include modern solutions closes these gaps, protecting students and staff from potential threats.
Modernizing access control with Visitor Management
Software like Raptor Visitor Management offers schools a more robust, efficient, and secure method of tracking and managing visitors. For example:
- Classifying visitors according to their purpose—be it parents, contractors, or volunteers—allows schools to maintain a stringent check on who enters the building and why.
- By screening visitors against sex offender registries and customizable databases, schools can instantly identify and mitigate potential threats. This instant alert mechanism, an integral part of the system, ensures that any unauthorized or flagged individual attempting entry triggers a swift response from the administration.
- Schools can also bring increased efficiency to daily school operations by using a visitor management system to track late arrivals, manage early student dismissals, and maintain detailed visitor logs.
Advanced and robust emergency management systems
In an emergency, a timely and coordinated response is crucial, and two-way communication alongside panic alerts are indispensable in these scenarios. Raptor Alert allows for seamless communication with emergency responders, and real-time data sharing ensures that first responders receive accurate and immediate information.
Capabilities include:
- Compatibility with all standard Public Safety Answering Point and emergency calling infrastructure and is RapidSOS Ready™ which accelerates the transfer of critical emergency alert data to 911 and first responders.
- Real-time group messaging.
- Detailed, situation-specific alerts once the panic button is pressed so everyone knows how to respond.
- Alerts provide the type, location, time, and who initiated the emergency and can be sent across functions such as text message, email, voice call, and push notification.
Further, the Team Assist feature within Raptor Alert gives teachers and staff the power to request help for situations like student fights, irate visitors, or medical incidents. This sends alerts to a pre-determined group of staff and enables those involved to chat through group messaging. Raptor Team Assist operates in the same manner as Raptor Alert, so your staff won’t have to learn a new platform for every day emergencies.
Close safety and security gaps with Raptor
Partnering with Raptor means having the means and support to be proactive about your school’s safety and security. Learn more about how you can further protect your campus by reading Raptor’s free guide on K-12 visitor management.
Related Resources
Guide to K-12 Visitor Management
Best Practices for Year-Round Safety
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