FINDLAY, Ohio — Safety in school is a priority for parents and guardians, so in addition to a new declaration for School Safety month, a community grant in Findlay is bringing in new tools to keep schools secure.
The Findlay City School board unanimously approved the purchase and installation of the SafeDefend Active Shooter Response System back in August.
This integrated system will be present in all 12 school district buildings and allows any teacher or administrator to easily trigger a building-wide lockdown in the event of an active shooter.
The warning is also immediately pushed to all local first responders.
"We give that instant notification, which is the most important piece, in our opinion," school board President Matt Cooper said. "On top of that, it also gives our teachers the ability to control their threshold in the event of an emergency and it gives them the ability to fight back."
District representatives said with a SafeDefend kit in every classroom, first responders will have an easier time locating where the incident is taking place.
"We found the teachers didn't all know the room numbers," Findlay Police Department Lt. Andrew Welch said. "So, by us being able to implement this system, it gives us the opportunity to respond directly to where the threat would be and there's no guesswork involved."
Below is a demonstration of the voice over alert module that will be in all 12 school buildings:
"And with the touch of a finger, it activates and sends an alert to all of the first responders in the city and the community because it's a community-wide response," Cooper said. "It's not just police department or fire department, it's OSP, the Sheriff's office, our dispatch center."
The entire system will cost about $800,000 and the district is in the process of applying for state grants to cover the remainder of the cost.
Last week, the Findlay-Hancock County Community Foundation awarded FCS a $100,000 community grant for the new system.
"Not just for the young people attending school, but also for parents, for staff and teachers to let everybody know that we support the schools," FHCCF President and CEO Brian Treece said.
The current plan is to have enough of the SafeDefend technology installed in the school buildings to have faculty and staff training by the end of this year, with the entire system up and running in January.