Alyssa's Law in Action: Unveiling the Impacts on Texas School Safety

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The state's most used panic button provider, CENTEGIX^®, releases a comprehensive report on how its wearable technology is making Texas schools safer every day.

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- CENTEGIX^®, the leader in incident response solutions, released today its report on Texas school safety, providing an important new resource for lawmakers, school officials and parents. Created following the passage of critical school safety legislation in 2023 – including Alyssa's Law – the report offers key insights and statistics on trends impacting school safety, including most frequent incident locations, the different types of emergencies reported on campuses and adoption rates among staff.

The Texas Legislature passed two bills in the 2023 regular session, providing funding for school facilities and security in the wake of the tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. As the Legislature provided $1.4 billion towards school safety, it also adopted provisions on how districts may spend their funding allotments. One such provision was Alyssa's Law. Named for Alyssa Alhadeff, one of 17 students killed during the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Alyssa's Law requires Texas public schools and academies to provide a silent panic alarm technology (SPAT) emergency alert system that immediately transmits a signal or message to first responders.

CENTEGIX's CrisisAlert^™ mobile panic button system aligns with Texas' new requirement for SPAT, and is already installed in many districts across the state. To assist schools in their efforts to comply with new statewide security requirements, CENTEGIX compiled data from its CrisisAlert^™ mobile panic button solution into its report on Texas school safety to provide insights, including:

• 98% of staff using the badge say they feel safer. They note it's easy to use and recommend the wearable technology, and since it doesn't require them to download an app, it has a 100% adoption rate.
• It's the most used panic button in the state.
• 98% of the alerts issued have been for everyday emergencies, like medical issues and student behavior.
• Nearly half of all alerts were sent from outside of classrooms, where staff are least likely to have access to phones or other forms of communication. With CrisisAlert's precise location technology, responders see where the emergency is happening on their digital campus map.

"Following the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, parents, teachers, school officials and lawmakers came together to find practical solutions to protect our schools, including the passage of Alyssa's Law," said CENTEGIX CEO Brent Cobb. "We work with schools across Texas every day to increase safety for their students and staff. The data from our CrisisAlert solution demonstrates the positive impact on school safety. We are making that information available to the public, to help schools across Texas and the country."

For more about Texas school safety initiatives, paired with analysis and recommendations, download CENTEGIX's free report here.

About CENTEGIX:
CENTEGIX^® is the industry leader and largest wearable safety technology provider for K-12 education with over 600,000 badges in use. The cloud-based CENTEGIX Safety Platform^™ initiates the fastest response time for emergencies campus-wide. Leaders in over 11,500 locations nationwide trust CENTEGIX's innovative safety solutions to empower and protect people every day. 

MEDIA CONTACT
Dylan MacInerney
(512) 481-2496
[email protected]

SOURCE CENTEGIX