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Raptor Emergency Management System coming this summer
Oak Park and River Forest High School will roll out a new app-based safety component this summer to make it easier for teachers and staff to initiate a schoolwide lockdown or shelter in place if the need arises.
The Emergency Management System from Houston-based Raptor Technologies will be introduced for summer school with an official introduction to all faculty and staff next fall, according to Kristen Devitt, director of campus safety.
Devitt said the district has, for several years, been using Raptor’s VisitorSafe visitor management system, a program used during the school day where anyone from outside of OPRF must sign in at the entrance and receive a visitor pass, thus tracking who is in the building at any time.
But the emergency management system is another step, according to Devitt.
“What that does is everybody will be able to install an app on their phones and it accesses kind of a panic button,” she said. “Any faculty and staff can download the app and initiate a lockdown or hold or shelter in place if necessary.”
With the app download and appropriate sign-in credentials, the Raptor system will be able to identify where a teacher is located in the event of an actual emergency, and what that teacher’s student roster is.
“It helps us keep track of our drills and requirements and has a limited mode of communication, so our administrators can talk to each other,” Devitt said. ‘It’s pretty easy to use.”
That’s not all. District 200 is also implementing Raptor StudentSafe, essentially a records management system for the district’s behavioral threat management team. Devitt said StudentSafe is being used on a limited basis until full training can be completed by the district’s behavioral threat assessment and management team in June.
According to Raptor’s website, StudentSafe “aids schools in managing student well-being.” For example, if a student shows any type of concerning behaviors where they might be a threat to themselves or someone else, StudentSafe immediately escalates that concern into an assessment or an investigation.
“We’ve been building out StudentSafe for our student forms for the last month or so,” Devitt said. “It’s being used for some case management. StudentSafe holds us accountable to make sure we’re following our own protocols and doing violence prevention.”
