Summer break is when school districts look to improve their learning environment. Security and efficiency contribute to a productive learning atmosphere by providing a safe and well-maintained setting. Emergencies, disasters, and intruders require preparation and practice so that when they occur, everyone remains safe. Along with safety, efficiency ensures arrival/dismissal, extra-curricular, maintenance, cleanups, busing, and event transportation go as smoothly as possible. These things enable students to thrive and parents, faculty, staff, and the community to take pride in their schools.
Good, integrated communications play a crucial role in achieving that goal. Yet, school communications can be diverse. Various groups at a school or across the school district can have different, independent communication tools to reach one another. The inability to communicate easily slows responses – impacting safety and efficiency. Icom can help create a solution from the ground up or by leveraging what you have so your entire team can communicate in times of emergency or during routine activities.
CONNECT Administration
Certified or classified staff ensure students are in the building before the first bell. After the last bell, they usher students out and onto buses without lingering. During arrival and dismissal duties, radios help staff move students across campus or check specific building areas. The admin staff may have radios more suited for indoor use. Sports teams might have unlicensed radios to talk with other coaches and coordinate drills. These two radios may be unable to speak to each other due to the different frequencies.
If so, when a weather alert or student update is needed, the staff must go out to the practice field, which is time-consuming and inefficient. Calling the coaches’ cell phones is not guaranteed, as they might not feel the vibration or hear the ringtone. Giving the staff two radios – one for their use and another to contact the coaches – requires one more item to buy, track, and maintain. It doesn’t scale if other groups have their type of radio. Another common tactic is to provide the same radios for everyone. This costly approach doesn’t consider the staff choice of a UHF radio because it works well indoors. The coach chose a lower-priced MURS radio based on the booster club budget. Icom’s CONNECT solution addresses these challenges by interconnecting the different radio types into a single system. Staff and coaches can talk when they need to while keeping the radios they have.
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CONNECT Safety
Safety often requires good communication between individuals that may not talk in their daily routine. The US Department of Justice School Safety Working Group’s Ten Essential Actions to Improve School Safety report includes five physical security actions emphasizing communications. Emergency and disaster drills require communication between students, staff, and public safety organizations. Students, staff, and public safety organizations practice how to respond with exercises, so their interactions succeed when it counts.
For example, fire drills require students and staff to leave the building, and orderly assemble outside. Teachers check in with a headcount. For missing students, teachers must report to someone who is already busy, such as firefighters inspecting the building. The inability to quickly and easily communicate adds time. During the drill, the extra time cuts into teaching time. During an emergency, the extra time impacts safety.
Icom’s CONNECT solution enables interoperability among school staff, firefighters, school resource officers, and local law enforcement during drills and emergencies. For an in-depth look at interoperability, read our Collegium Charter School case study.
CONNECT Facilities
Phones have long been an efficient and standard resource for schools. Teachers can call the front office and other classrooms at their leisure. However, those who roam around schools, such as janitors and maintenance personnel, are harder to contact. They’re rarely near a phone. Yes, the teacher can call the front office, who could get maintenance over the PA system. But, that relay depends on the availability and workload of the office staff. Being one direction communication, the PA leaves open whether they heard the announcement and what equipment to bring.
And, if used too often, frequent PA announcements can be a distraction. These inefficiencies disrupt learning and may allow a safety issue to exist longer than necessary.
Icom’s CONNECT solution allows a phone to talk with a radio. With it, contacting a custodian can be readily available to all classrooms with a phone. Icom CONNECT is a solution that avoids having to give radios to every teacher. Alternatively, if personnel doesn’t respond, Icom’s CONNECT solution can link with PA systems as a backup.
CONNECT Transportation
School buses operate on an independent district-wide radio system – either traditional radio or radios operating over the modern LTE cellular system. School grounds staff may also use that system or may have different radios for campus-only use. Intercommunication is a challenge when schools have their own system. This is particularly important in times of emergency when everyone needs to be notified and tracked, as this case study of St. Maries Joint School District in Idaho demonstrates.
Bus drivers play a critical role in arrivals and departures. They coordinate on their district-independent system. When a bus is late, they communicate with the district dispatch, who relays it to the school’s front office. The front office then speaks to the arrival and dismissal staff.
If a student fails to arrive home, parents contact the school, who may work to reach the bus driver to help find that child.
Luckily, with CONNECT bridging independent communication systems together is easily done. Anyone with the authority to do so can easily communicate across systems with a simple channel selection. School staff can contact dispatch on their own radios. Bus drivers can provide updates direct to the arrival, dismissal, and front office.
It can be set up however your policies dictate rather than dictating policies based on technology limitations.
CONNECT Your School
Various radio types, going through multiple people to relay messages, and mismatched technologies can hinder learning. Icom’s CONNECT solution uses the VE-PG4 RoIP gateway to create a single ‘meta’ system to bridge these communications.
With Icom CONNECT, admins can talk with coaches; teachers can use their office phones to speak to janitors; conversation without third-party relays; independent communication systems such as school district and public safety agencies can communicate with school staff. Beyond that, connect radios to building automation for PA use, control lights, lock doors, and much more.
Icom CONNECT can scale as your school evolves while giving the flexibility desired among your groups.
Let Icom help plan and CONNECT your school’s disparate communication solutions.
