Empowering School Safety: Alyssa’s Law and Spectralink’s solutions

In the United States, the school environment has unfortunately become synonymous as much with danger as it has with education. Since 1999, there have been more than 380 school shootings in the US, with more than 325,000 students experiencing gun violence at school since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. In one year since the Uvalde, Texas school shooting has sparked debate about both the response of the school and police officers on the scene, laws are starting to be put in effect to help make schools a safer place.

Alyssa’s Law, put in place in 2019, started to see some traction in 2023. This law, named after Alyssa Alhadeff, a 14-year-old victim of the Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, requires all public elementary and secondary school buildings to be equipped with a silent panic alarm that is connected to local law enforcement. It has now been adopted in New Jersey, Florida, New York, Texas, and Tennessee and is pending in Arizona, Georgia, Nebraska, Oregon, and Virginia, with other states soon to follow. This law aims to help improve the response time of law enforcement during emergencies in public schools.

While a panic button in each classroom is an excellent start, what if faculty and staff could be equipped with a helpline to emergency services and support at all times? What if they could use the same device to alert authorities in the event of a shooting but also summon school security and resource officers in the incident of a fight, or call for nursing and medical staff in the event of a playground or sporting event injury, or to simply hold a video conference with a parent to have a more personal connection when discussing personal matters such as a student’s mental health or performance? And, what if that device had speakerphone, walkie-talkie/push-to-talk, and video monitoring capabilities so that it could provide even more information to the emergency or support services before they even arrive on the scene?

With an enterprise smartphone, like the Versity Series from Spectralink, all this and more is available at the push of a programmable button to help keep students and staff safe. Instead of being locked to a single location at the front of a classroom, all staff can be equipped with this smartphone that can summon help at the push of a button. In the case of the Versity, the red panic button can be programmed for a number of functions and can be programmed to contact the appropriate response team. Push-to-Talk features combined with MS Teams can open broadcast channels to support teams to call them to a location in the event of a fight or injury. And with a built-in camera, a video feed can be opened to share what is happening in the emergency’s location.

Plus, that same device can be used to aid faculty and staff in their day-to-day tasks outside of emergency situations. They can access student records, enter grades, call and text between teammates, and connect entire teams through UC integrations. And, as more and more education-specific applications are being developed, they can be added to these enterprise phones to make the lives of busy teachers on the move so much easier, freeing them from being tied to a desk or a specific location for parts of their job.

With campuses expanding outside of the classroom and many schools facing staffing shortages, equipping teachers and staff with a tool that can not only help keep their students and themselves safe, but also make their jobs a little easier is the right move.

To learn more about Spectralink SAFE features, check out our website. And reach out to our team to learn more about how Spectralink helps make mobility work for education.