The quick activation of an emergency alert system during a shooting at a Georgia high school on Wednesday may have saved lives, according to law enforcement officials.
At about 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, law enforcement was notified of an emergency at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. Officers arrived “within minutes,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.
Two teachers and two 14-year-old students were killed in the shooting. Nine others, eight students and a teacher, were taken to hospitals with injuries. A 14-year-old student is the suspected shooter.
During a press conference Wednesday evening, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said his office was initially notified of the shooting through the activation of a panic button by a staff member. The buttons—worn by all staff members—immediately notify local police that a serious emergency is in progress, and provide the precise location of the danger.
The Barrow County school district has been using the technology only “for about a week,” according to Smith.
A spokesperson for Centegix, the company that manufactures the panic alarm system, declined to comment Thursday. The Barrow County school system didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Without the immediate notification to law enforcement, the situation could have been much worse, Hosey said.
“The protocols at this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had here today,” Hosey said.
Education Week in January spoke with leaders from Centegix and districts that have implemented the system to learn more about how it works, the benefits, and potential downsides.
What are panic buttons and how do they work?
Most commonly, the panic buttons are thin, rectangular devices staff wear on the back side of their ID badges. An indentation on the badge indicates where a staff member should press in an emergency to activate the alarm.
When a staff member presses the button in a certain sequence—eight or more times in succession for the Centegix system—it triggers a campus-wide alert and, depending on district protocol, a lockdown. That typically includes an alarm that sounds over the intercom and flashing lights, similar to when a fire alarm goes off. The system sends the location of the alarm’s origin to police, who have a map of the school.
Can panic alarms be used in less serious situations?
School shootings are statistically rare, and while the alarm systems are designed to speed up response times to major emergencies, Centegix CEO Brent Cobb says more than 95 percent of the alarm activations each year are for day-to-day problems, like a behavioral challenge in a classroom or a medical emergency.
To call for help in less serious situations, staff can press the button three times, which notifies a designated team of school staff—usually administrators, health personnel, and school security—to respond.
How common are panic alarm devices in schools?
It’s difficult to say exactly, but Centegix first released its panic button in 2019, and company leaders said in January the system has been installed in more than 12,000 public and private schools nationwide. Others schools may work with different companies that offer similar technology, or use mobile app-based systems that do not require employees to wear physical buttons.
Three states—Texas, New Jersey, and Florida—have passed legislation requiring public schools to be equipped with a panic alarm system. Two other states—New York and Tennessee—require schools to consider such systems in their school safety plans. Lawmakers in a number of other states are considering panic button laws for schools.
In Georgia, where the Sept. 4 shooting at Apalachee High School happened, 80 percent of public schools are equipped with the Centegix alert system, according to a company report released in May. Centegix is headquartered in Atlanta, about 50 miles west of Apalachee High School.
Are there any downsides to the panic alarm system?
Some security experts have cautioned districts against overlooking smaller, day-to-day safety fixes, such as making sure schools’ exterior doors are locked and training staff, when adopting emergency alert systems. In essence, the experts recommend that schools be proactive with their safety measures, rather than primarily relying on a system that is reactive to threats and danger.
Ken Trump, who runs an Ohio-based school security consulting firm, described the quick adoption of such technology as “security theater” and part of a scramble by schools to show that they’re doing something. He told the Associated Press in 2022 that efforts like training staff are most effective, but the public tends to feel most comforted by tangible things like panic buttons.
What other similar measures are there?
Aside from the physical buttons staff can wear with their ID badges, some districts have implemented app-based alert systems.
With those systems, staff members are asked to download an app to their mobile devices that allows them to push a button that sends an emergency alert to others and, in emergencies, police. But some experts and school district leaders have said it’s difficult to get all employees to download the app and, then, take alerts sent through the app seriously.
The Little Rock, Ark., district previously attempted to use an app-based system, but less than 20 percent of staff downloaded the app, according to Ron Self, the district’s director of safety, security, and risk management. With the physical badges, there’s “nearly universal compliance,” he told Education Week earlier this year.
And even when staff download the emergency alert app, the alerts may not reach them in a timely fashion, as illustrated by the May 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. In that situation, the school had implemented an alert app, and a school employee sent a lockdown alert when the shooter approached the school.
But not all teachers received it because of poor Wi-Fi or because they had their phones turned off or in drawers, according to an investigation by the Texas legislature. Others may not have taken it seriously, according to the report, because the school used the app to send frequent alerts about community incidents—often, U.S. Border Patrol car chases—that did not directly affect the school.
