GOAL Digital Academy and The Tomorrow Center

Community Schools Benefit from Wireless Technology Solutions

Description

Creating a positive partnership with students, whether they are in a classroom or in their homes, has been a consistent objective for two of Ohio’s leading community schools – GOAL Digital Academy and the Tomorrow Center.

The Tomorrow Center provides education for students with severe emotional disabilities – grades 3 -12. GOAL Digital Academy is a distance-learning school for students, grades K-12. Both schools, which are funded by state allocations and federal grants, face unique challenges on a daily basis.

Opportunity

Helping students and teachers to feel safe and students to be inspired to learn formulate the impressive standards that are set by the staff of the Tomorrow Center every day. The students enrolled at GOAL Digital Academy are rarely on campus, learn from home via the Internet and interact with teachers via chat rooms, email, bulletin boards, and instant messaging. But the Academy holds an expensive assortment of equipment and critical records which must constantly be kept secure.

Both schools looked at their objectives, knew that they needed some creative solutions, and started looking for answers. Laura Chevenak, the Teacher/Director of the Academy, asked Status Solutions to recommend wireless technology which could bring about the results of security and safety. Although the requirements for the two schools are different, both needed monitoring and alerting when situations threatened their goals.

Solution

Status Solutions recommended SARA, its Situational Awareness and Response Assistant, designed to provide wireless alerting and monitoring, as well as historic reporting and integration with existing systems, such as the telephone system. SARA offers safety and security through the use of panic buttons by teachers and door and window monitors for rooms that house equipment and records.

Teachers at the Tomorrow Center carry panic buttons, either on necklaces or belt clips. Wherever teachers are located on campus, by merely pressing the panic button, they can immediately transmit an alert to telephones in the main office or cell phones carried by key staff. The panic button alerts the persons that can offer an effective response to a troublesome or emergency situation. SARA also retains historical reports of alerts and incidents. Alerts can be transmitted either by text messaging or by voice.

Equipment and critical records for the Academy are stored in specific locations in order to maintain security. By installing door and window sensors in those rooms, the Academy enhances the quality of its security and reduces the risk of stolen equipment and records. The threat of unauthorized access is, therefore, minimized. Again, if a threat occurs, an instantaneous alert is communicated to telephones and cell phones.

Because student behavior at the Tomorrow Center can be unpredictable, teachers feel a heightened sense of safety with the use of the panic button. Interestingly enough, the panic button has also become a symbol of safety to students and helps alleviate any sense of risk in the student environment.

Helping to encourage a desire to learn in students with such varied backgrounds and experiences can be a daunting task. Coupled with a risk to safety makes it worse. The presence of instant alerts to emergency events frees the minds of students and teachers so that education can progress at a successful rate.

Partnership

SARA is an emergency alert system that can be installed for use by schools, municipalities, senior centers, or any facility that needs to communicate and broadcast incident alerts and emergency requests. It is a powerful solution that provides integration with a facility’s security/safety, wired/wireless devices, performs monitoring and alerting, and provides historical reporting. SARA provides comprehensive coverage for a facility and heightened awareness for its management and staff. It is designed to save provide an optimal combination of functionality and return on investment.