Redondo Beach schools may soon see a new alert system, following a report on a unified emergency alert and communication program presented the Redondo Unified School District’s Board of Education on Tuesday.
District staff began looking for streamlined ways of communications after a lockdown incident last year while Torrance police tracked a suspect near Adams Middle School.
“We were all communicating. [Superintendent] Keller was on his radio, we were all texting each other, calling and sending emails, and I believe we were communicating effectively,” said Student Services Director Nicole Wesley. “But we could probably do this more effectively.”
Current protocol requires a series of steps between teachers, administrators and the district office before alerts can be sent out to the community. But as Wesley acknowledged, emails, texts, and phone calls are not always immediately responded to.
Titan HST, a mobile application, and communications network are designed for campus sites.
The Titan HST app would push alerts directly to including administrators, staff, parents, and students. Alerts would be pushed out both through the app and through text messages, emails or phone calls.
Messages can also be pushed out from staff, to alert other campus-connected users to potential problems at the school site.
“What we like most is that it’s real time, so as long as we have our phones, we can be notified instantly if there are paramedics on campus, or if there are situations that are more extreme than that,” Wesley said.
District staff plans a pilot program of the app at Redondo Union High School through the rest of the year and the summer before training administrators from across the district for the Fall semester.
The application will cost $1.99 per user, per year, including students. Parents will have access associated with their student.
The presentation ended without board approval of a pilot program, though the application was warmly received by board members.
Drug dogs on campus
The Redondo School Board will request an increased presence from Redondo Beach Police K-9s on the RUHS campus to combat drug use, though district officials declined to bring drug-sniffing dogs to the middle schools. Currently, K-9s randomly perform checks at RUHS about once per quarter.
Administrators are concerned about increases in electronic cigarettes use among students.
K-9s were last on RUHS campus on Friday, April 20, where they made two hits leading to searches that led to no findings.
