School board gets SafeDefend demo, passes $40 million budget

Sheila McGuire, Herald Reporter
Posted 7/24/18

The UCSD No. 1 board saw how the new SafeDefend biometric lockboxes will work and passed the budget for the year.

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School board gets SafeDefend demo, passes $40 million budget

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EVANSTON — The Uinta County School District No. 1 board of trustees met on Wednesday, July 18, for the annual budget hearing and the July regular meeting.

In addition to passing the budget, the trustees discussed professional development contracts for the upcoming school year, shared results of a recent staff satisfaction survey and viewed a presentation on the SafeDefend program the board decided to purchase at the June meeting. Trustees Kim Bateman and Tammy Walker were not present.

The SafeDefend presentation was the top discussion item on the agenda, and Shea Coogler, SafeDefend safety advocate, spoke with trustees and provided a demonstration as to how the safety boxes and modules soon to be installed in every district classroom will work.

The modules are designed to be activated by a finger swipe and will be programmed with the fingerprints of all district staff members. When activated, the system immediately sends a text message to all district administration, staff and law enforcement as notification not only that an incident is in progress but also the exact location. Coogler said this location awareness can allow students and staff in the immediate area to go into lockdown while others can get out of the building.

Coogler had a SafeDefend safety unit to use as an example and swiped his own finger on the sensor. Within seconds, phones started buzzing as all of the trustees and administrators received text messages. In this instance, the unit had been programmed for the art room at Evanston High School, and text messages pinpointed that exact location.

Not only do the classroom units send notifications and notify 911, but they are equipped with sirens and flashing lights and serve as safes containing multiple items in case of an emergency, including a strobe light, a baton, pepper spray, handcuffs, a trauma kit and more. The boxes themselves will be bolted down so they are immobile, and simple activation modules will also be located in hallways and common areas such as cafeterias.

Coogler said he had spent the day touring district buildings to determine placement, and the SafeDefend team will return in August to finish installing the entire system. All district staff will also receive training on the operation of the units, and the items in them and will have fingerprints programmed into the system.

Trustees asked about using the safety boxes as lockboxes for anyone approved to carry a firearm under the district’s new concealed carry policy. Coogler said they can definitely be used for that purpose as well, in which case the boxes containing firearms will be programmed to open only for the finger swipe of an authorized person instead of every staff member. Since every classroom in the district will now be fitted with a locked safety box, it will help with the confidentiality requirement of the concealed carry policy as no one will know which boxes, if any, also contain firearms.

UCSD No. 1 is the first district in Wyoming to purchase the SafeDefend system and is actually the first district in the region to do so as well.

“So we’re going to be the first with the gun policy and this system in Wyoming?” trustee Dave Bennett asked.

When Coogler replied in the affirmative, Bennett said, “So we must really care about the safety of our kids. I want that out there.”

When asked for additional information about the system, Douglas Parisi, SafeDefend director of training, said the system has been installed in more than 100 schools in nine states in the Midwest, and the company has also installed systems in government buildings, hospitals and businesses. Parisi said FBI studies show alerting building occupants is the number one thing that can be done to reduce casualties in the event of an armed intruder, and the SafeDefend system is designed to do that immediately.

“We like to say at SafeDefend there is 100 percent deterrence from our system,” Parisi said. “The system has never been activated in a true emergency.”

He continued by saying there were several people in attendance at the Route 91 Festival shooting in Las Vegas last year who had taken the SafeDefend training and credited it with saving their lives.

“Being prepared, having a plan in place and understanding the threat are critical elements in a crisis. Having options to protect and respond to trauma will save lives,” he said.

In other business, the board passed the 2018-19 balanced budget of approximately $40 million. Chief financial officer John Williams said overall the district budget looks healthy and most departments were actually under budget last year. Superintendent Ryan Thomas said the district had strategically saved in the 2017-18 school year in anticipation of large one-time purchases anticipated in the coming year.

Immediately after passing the budget, the board amended it to use funds from the district reserve savings account of approximately $6 million for those one-time purchases, including the 6-12 English curriculum, a portion of the SafeDefend program, a snowplow and a new bus the district won’t receive reimbursement for until 2020. Those purchases will decrease the reserves by a total of just under $500,000, leaving approximately $5.5 million in savings.

The board also voted to continue professional development programs with consultants Aaron Hansen and Jan Heogh, to continue the work on professional learning communities and high-reliability schools that the district has embraced in the past school year.

Finally, the board discussed the results of the staff satisfaction survey. Thomas said about one-third of district staff responded to the survey, which was a simple survey that addressed satisfaction with the board, the superintendent and district in general. Overall, approximately 80-90 percent of respondents said they were satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the board, the superintendent and the district’s focus on goals, objectives and the strategic plan, the work completed during the past year and the response to wants and needs of students, staff, parents and the community.

The lowest satisfaction scores were to the final question on the response to wants and needs, which board chair Cassie Torres said indicated there is still room for improvement in that area. Thomas said he was very pleased with the overall results, given that in the 2017-18 school year the board talked about “three of the most controversial issues in the history of the district” —the adoption of the concealed carry policy, the delayed-start Mondays beginning this upcoming school year and the efforts last fall to reduce the size of the board from nine to seven members (which was not adopted).

Thomas attributed the positive results on the survey to the work on curriculum and staff development.

“The amount and quality of staff development we provided in one year is amazing,” he said.