Technology in Schools: New Report Outlines K–12 School Safety Trends

Originally published July 2024

CENTEGIX®, the largest wearable safety technology provider for K–12 education, today released its 2024 School Safety Trends Report. Unique to the panic button market, the report offers a comprehensive analysis of school safety incident trends observed during the 2023–2024 academic year through data collected from the CENTEGIX Safety Platform™.

CENTEGIX solutions are utilized by 800+ districts nationwide. The flagship of the CENTEGIX Safety Platform is CrisisAlert™, a wearable panic button solution with dynamic incident mapping. Safety Blueprint™ displays digital campus maps and school safety assets and provides real-time locating features for incident response and visitor management.

Key highlights

• Over 10 million people across the U.S., including students, educators, and staff, are protected by CENTEGIX. There’s a 45% increase in users since January 2023.
  
  
• Educators and staff initiated over 183,000 alerts this school year. This indicates a 40% increase compared to the previous year—suggesting a shift away from mobile phone apps to wearable panic buttons by staff members.
  
  
• 99% of all alerts are for everyday emergencies, such as medical and behavioural incidents. Campus-wide incidents such as lockdowns and shelter-in-place continue to represent a small percentage of total alerts.
  
  
• More than 50% of school safety incidents occur outside the classroom such as hallways, parking lots, or sports fields, highlighting the importance of precise location information for an emergency response system. First responders need to know exactly where help is needed to reduce response time.

Prioritizing Safety

“We’re working with hundreds of districts across the country to improve school safety, and our technology continues to have a significant impact on everyday incidents and emergencies. The badges are used by staff every day to de-escalate altercations, to get life-saving devices to medical emergencies, and to provide staff with support when it’s needed,” said Brent Cobb, CEO of CENTEGIX.

“The kind of incident response solution you equip your staff with can significantly impact the outcome in a crisis situation. Schools across the U.S. have recognized the power of a multilayered approach to safety, choosing the CENTEGIX Safety Platform as the foundation for their school safety plan. Our platform is accelerating responses to emergencies and saving lives in the process.”

Meade County School District, KY, Teacher Michele Miller describes their first event that occurred two weeks after CrisisAlert was implemented. “There were probably about four of us in the general area of where this [emergency] occurred, and I think all four of us ended up pushing our button and within a matter of seconds, three administrators showed up at the location, directly at the location and took over the situation. I’ve been here 18 years, that just doesn’t happen, that’s the quickest response I’ve ever seen.”

With CENTEGIX, K–12 teachers and staff are empowered to respond to any incident—from the every day to the extreme—anywhere on campus. Learn more about 2024 School Safety Trends: Saving Seconds Saves Lives and download the full report.

About CENTEGIX
CENTEGIX is the industry leader in wearable safety technology for K–12 education with over 600,000 badges in use. To learn more about CENTEGIX, visit www.centegix.com.