Enhancing School Safety: Why a Layered Approach is Necessary
by Kat Wilkerson, Content Marketing Specialist
Educators are an important part of our children’s lives, but the growing threats facing K-12 schools – including active shooters, medical emergencies, and more – make their jobs much harder.
For over 20 years, Alertus has worked with hundreds of educational institutions to deliver impactful emergency mass notifications throughout academic, recreational, and administrative settings.
A layered mass notification system (MNS) is the most comprehensive way to ensure everyone across your facilities or campus gets critical information when and where they need it. As the only company in the mass notification industry covering all four Critical Alerting Layers – facility, network, outdoor, and personal – Alertus enhances and extends mass notification reach to provide peace of mind to staff, students, and families.
Facility-based Notification
Schools can overcome challenges in loud environments such as cafeterias and gymnasiums through facility-based notification, including audible and visual alerts.
The Alertus System allows designated personnel to activate an emergency alert in one touch, regardless of location – reducing risk, as activators aren’t tied to vulnerable areas such as front offices or need to activate disparate systems from multiple locations.
With Alertus’ flexible, scalable, and reliable MNS, you can streamline emergency communication and response procedures by integrating building automation capabilities.
Alert Beacon®
The Alert Beacon is designed to integrate with LED signs, signaling devices, electronic door locks, and other external equipment.
Interfaced with third-party mass notification solutions through our open Alertus API and Common Alert Protocol (CAP).
Utilizes bright strobe lights and clear emergency tone sounders to grab the attention of building occupants.
Ability to display a custom emergency message and provide instructions on how to respond to an emergency.
IP Network-based Alerting
Using existing infrastructure can ensure you reach your entire school population with consistent alerts while extending coverage to visitors and other guests who may not be accounted for in staff directories.
Alertus’ IP technology transforms a school’s indoor areas into a unified emergency communication system. Transform VoIP phones, computers, digital signage, and other network-connected technology into intelligent devices for instant communication throughout school grounds.
IP Text-to-Speech Interface
Send clear, enunciated emergency and non-emergency notifications in real-time without physically being at the PA system to activate.
IP Text-to-Speech Speaker
Deliver highly intelligible indoor audio that can integrate with existing systems.
Deliver on-the-fly human speech synthesis, pre-recorded messages, and unique tones to alert teachers, staff, and students.
Alertus Desktop™ Notifications
Send desktop notifications to all staff with just a few clicks by leveraging Alertus Desktop™ for your organization.
Solely alert staff to reduce student panic during a lockdown or emergency drill.
Improve non-emergency communication for instances such as IT outages or school schedule changes.
Provide bilingual alerting by using custom templates.
VoIP Phones
Transform office and desk phones into a unified emergency communication system.
Digital PA: Send a real-time or prescheduled recorded message or an audio tone through the VoIP phone headset or speaker and display static or scrolling text.
Panic Button: Leverage your VoIP phone as an emergency button to request help or trigger pre-set alerts in vulnerable areas such as classrooms or front offices.
Network Coverage: Directly connect to your VoIP system for immediate alert distribution to staff without overwhelming phone networks.
Outdoor Warning
Immediate and intrusive notification ensures potentially live-saving information reaches everyone on sports fields, parking lots, outdoor classrooms, or playgrounds swiftly and effectively.
Alertus’ innovative outdoor warning solutions feature text-to-speech (TTS) technology to ensure your ability to notify everyone across broad areas and provide real-time information.
Mobile High Power Speaker Array (MHPSA)
A temporary PA system designed with features that meet the needs of K-12 grounds to provide intelligible and effective notification.
Deploy giant voice emergency notifications for special events, including athletics and graduations.
Outdoor Horns
Coupled with Alertus text-to-speech technology, these horns are multi-directional and fully zoneable to inform students and staff of an emergency and how to respond.
Provide clear spoken messages and siren tones throughout widespread areas such as playgrounds.
Personal Notification
Reaching everyone across school grounds, regardless of location, through fast, multilayered, redundant alerting is vital to ensuring on-site safety. Alertus offers mobile phone apps for enhanced mobile notification between authorized dispatchers and end-users.
The Recipient App
Allows end-users to receive push notifications and quickly send geo-tagged incident reports to emergency management personnel via the panic button feature.
Alertus integrates seamlessly with leading third-party personal recipient notification solutions, including Everbridge, Rave, and AlertAware.
Alertus Activator App
With the Alertus Activator App, all emergency notification endpoints can be activated on the go with just a click of a button — even when the dispatcher is away from the PA system.
Quickly send emergency notification alerts to faculty, staff, students, or personnel via Android or iOS tablets or smartphones.
Launch an alert to the Alertus Alert Beacon, Desktop Notification, VoIP phone alert, digital signage, Alertus Recipient App, and more.
Schools must communicate quickly and effectively to mitigate harm and destruction in an emergency. Outfitting your facility with an MNS or adding layers to your current notification system will provide your community better protection and quicker communication.