CENTEGIX safety measures

Fulton County implements new CENTEGIX badges as an additional safety measure

Photo by Sonya Pandya, Photographer; Graphic by Nethra Pai, Staff Writer

Nethra Pai, Staff Writer & Emilee Leffew, Staff Writer

Recently, Fulton County has implemented a new security system using CENTEGIX badges. These badges allow staff to call for immediate assistance anywhere in a Fulton County building.

Every staff member who works in a Fulton County building has a badge. Currently, there are multiple areas in the school, such as the gym, where there are no classroom buttons. Finding help would involve searching for an available teacher or classroom in order to notify the front office. With the CENTEGIX badges, finding help only involves pressing a button located on every badge.

“If you don't have a [classroom] button nearby, you can press it and it will send an alert to about 15 of us saying that somebody needs help and pinpointing their location within a 20-foot radius [of the alert] because it's Bluetooth driven based upon being on campus,” Martin Neuhaus, principal of Northview, said. “The second way to use this is for an active shooter. If you press it a certain number of times it will put the school on lockdown."

However, some teachers are apprehensive about the badges. In other schools and districts, staff have accidentally triggered alerts and lockdowns. Some teachers are concerned about the unintentional triggering of the badges. While there have been numerous rounds of training to mitigate this issue, the training has not always been effective.

“Personally, I really disliked them for a number of different reasons. One of the reasons would be that it is scary how easy it is to push these buttons. I'm constantly scared that I'm going to cross my arms and the whole thing will completely go off,” Elyse Stone, a new literature teacher at Northview, said.

Stone raises concerns with the tracking feature of the buttons. The Bluetooth feature means that teachers can be tracked within Fulton County buildings, which may be an invasion of privacy for some. Nevertheless, Fulton County is constantly improving the CENTEGIX badges, and the Safety and Security department views these instances as opportunities to learn. Through accidents, the county has learned what to reinforce and reteach to minimize similar instances.

“One of the things that we [implemented] were these stickers, because we noticed that when maybe there's a fight and somebody grabs [their badge], they keep clicking. So we thought to reinforce click three times and then stop if you need staff help,” Paul Hildreth, director of Safety and Security at Fulton County, said. “[Accidents] validate that the system is working, but number two, it lifts up continuous training, which is important when we think about how we deploy things in our district.”

Despite their drawbacks, the badges are slowly becoming a necessity in parts of Fulton County. Since staff can use them as a backup option to classroom buttons, it is easier for them to get the help they need.

“Schools are not always as safe as the [the county] would like [them] to be. I used to teach in South Fulton and I would see fights every day, if not multiple times per day,” Stone said. “I personally had an experience where I was in a situation and the white button didn't work, so no one was notified of it until I sent out multiple emails trying to find somebody.”

Teachers at Northview have already used the button with great success. While the buttons have not been used for a potential school shooting, there have been a few events where the badges proved extremely useful.

“[A teacher] was working with some special needs students when one of the students ended up leaving the room,” Darryl Paul, Northview’s Media Specialist, said. “She couldn't leave the kids she was with, so [the button] was a perfect response and we were able to arrive within a minute and get to that location.”

Ultimately, these badges are another method to keep kids in Fulton County safer in a world where schools are becoming increasingly dangerous.

"It saddens me that we need to do this for our country, for our school," Neuhaus said. "But anytime you can empower people, I'm all for it."