AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Region 16 held a school safety summit with over 250 educators from across the Panhandle participating.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Peter Langman, a psychologist and school safety expert. During Langman’s presentation he promoted school safety by sharing research on understanding perpetrators of school attacks, recognizing warning signs and taking meaningful action.
“What schools often have focused on for many years is the reactive measures such as lockdown drills or how to survive an active shooter incident,” explained Langman. “And those are important, and those might save lives, but those are not preventing the incident from happening. Those are responding to an incident in play. So, the purpose of threat assessment is to hopefully never have to go into lockdown, because you identify those threats early.”
According to Langman, schools often don’t have a threat assessment team trained and ready for action. During threat assessment training is where Langman shared people will learn potential dangers, warning signs and how to address potential threats.
Although much of the conference focused on preventative measures, there was also technology that focused on support schools during emergencies, like the Go to Green technology. According to CEO and inventor Erine Williams Go to Green has sensors in their equipment powered by ethernet that gets people away from dangerous threats including gunshots, chemical spills and fire alarms.
“Instead of focusing on the shooter, we’re focusing on pathways, getting people to safety,” said Williams. “I always like to say, if you don’t have a gun, don’t be in a gunfight. So, the idea is that when the gun goes off, the lights go automatically, go green. If you see a blinking green light that’s going to take you away from the shooter, if you see a steady red light that’s going to take you towards the shooter. So, in a fraction of a second, we can get you at least headed the right direction.”
Williams shared there is no other technology like this in the world.
“If you’re a student that’s in a hallway pass, or if you’re a staff member that’s in the hallway when this event happens and they close the doors, you got a 5050, chance of not running towards the shooter. So, we give you 100% chance of getting away from the shooter.”
Additionally, the summit focused on cyber safety, drug awareness and prevention, physical security and mental and behavioral health.
“It all has to do with relationships,” said Texline Superintendent Terrell Jones. “We work very, very hard to develop a personal relationship with each one of our students. So, we see them when they walk in the door every morning. We can tell in a in a glimpse, if they’ve had a bad night having a good day. You know, just in that way, if we if we see a problem developing, we can kind of take action to intervene and hopefully get things back on the right track.”
During the summit educators were able to network with a number of school staff from numerous districts, mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies to work towards having a unified plan to promote and support school safety.
“School Safety First of all, requires communication,” said Region 16 Safety Coordinator Crystal Seymour. “We’ve got to start talking about, how do we make our schools safe? And it’s not just about locks and ensuring that people aren’t, you know, allowed indoors or things like that, but it’s also then being aware that making sure that everyone is aware of how they can be a safe individual on a school campus, and how they can recognize when others around them may need help.”
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