Chardon (OH) Schools to get Motorola School Safe equipment

[Sportster77]

Testing and training today with the 250 radios tied into the Ohio Marcs IP System.
Chardon schools receive safety system donations from Motorola Solutions Inc. (with video)

 

[sc800]

For example, if a student sustains an injury during gym class the teacher can effectively communicate with EMT staffers before their arrival at the school, assisting with rapid and succinct actions.
Also, 911 dispatchers can call schools “to alert them to lock their doors or take other emergency precautions based on the incidents outside the school. This will prevent unanswered phone calls or other failures,”

Really? when has phone calls gone unanswered at a school. USE THE PHONES. I see BAD things happening here. Wait until one of the teachers steps on a FF trying to call a mayday; or a principal takes the radio home and decides to play traffic cop/curfew officer.

 

[rapidcharger]

This seems to me like creating a problem that doesn't actually exist.

Since the main reason for implementing this is because "teachers cannot teach and students cannot learn when they don't feel safe," (I may have mixed up the order there) why not conduct a survey of the teachers and students to see if they feel safe knowing they have to communicate with first responders via a third party even though the 3rd party is trained to deal with frantic people who in emergency situations and does so all day long, every day. I have this funny feeling the only teachers and students that don't feel safe will be in schools that will never have such a system see the light of day.

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

For example, if a student sustains an injury during gym class the teacher can effectively communicate with EMT staffers before their arrival at the school, assisting with rapid and succinct actions.
Also, 911 dispatchers can call schools “to alert them to lock their doors or take other emergency precautions based on the incidents outside the school. This will prevent unanswered phone calls or other failures,”

Really? when has phone calls gone unanswered at a school. USE THE PHONES. I see BAD things happening here. Wait until one of the teachers steps on a FF trying to call a mayday; or a principal takes the radio home and decides to play traffic cop/curfew officer.

I think it's a great idea! Dispatch already has the ability to patch us through to a school official as we are enroute to communicate things like which door number we should use, and which gates will be up for us.

Phones calls go unanswered at the schools a lot of times. Maybe your kid's school has a lot more money than ours here, but plenty of times a line will ring and ring because the office staff is busy with another call.

And if you give them their own talkgroup and don't give them access to the dispatch channel, I can't see any of the situations you talk about happening. Actually, the ideal way to do it would be to assign them a talk groups (HS Tac 1 for example) and just leave their radios on that TG. If a dispatcher needed to get a hold of the school, they could "tone out" the school to quickly get their attention. Alternately, it would be a monitored TG so a teacher or principal could just hop on and ask for EMS and the dispatcher could get that info back out on the air over the dispatch TG. As they are responding, they could get a situation update, and depending on medical protocols, might even be able to offer some assistance before they get there (yes, I understand this last part would require some more training).

But I doubt with the setup I described, any firefighter could get "walked on" by a teacher unless they programmed the firegrounds into the school radio. In which case that's a failure to plan and not an issue with the system itself.

 

[rapidcharger]

In which case that's a failure to plan and not an issue with the system itself.

Failure to plan is the leading cause of death in the United States, isn't it?

Instead of giving everyone at the school a police radio, why not give the police a school radio?

 

[kf8yk]

Instead of giving everyone at the school a police radio, why not give the police a school radio?

I realize that the article is missing a lot of technical details but they are not giving the schools police radios.

This system works similar to Motobridge. The schools on site UHF MotoTrbo System can be patched to the public safety 800 MHz P25 trunk on demand by a dispatcher. The schools also have the ability to patch together individual schools to each other or to the school bus P25 talk group.

 

[pete7919]

I saw an analog receiver a year or so ago that seemed to have a similar use in mind. It's called the Safeceiver. It was meant to give school personnel the ability to monitor a channel and listen for directions.

The problem with this system is that teachers are not trained for radio discipline and could easily overwhelm the system or clog it up.

 

[Sportster77]

This seems to me like creating a problem that doesn't actually exist.

. I have this funny feeling the only teachers and students that don't feel safe will be in schools that will never have such a system see the light of day.

Unfortunately the Chardon Schools were the scene of a shooting that left 3 students dead and a fourth severely wounded. A friend of mine's daughter still is having trouble dealing with the aftermath 2 years later

 

[MTS2000des]

Radios cannot stop bullets.

More trained, properly armed people can.

Just a thought.

 

[rapidcharger]

Unfortunately the Chardon Schools were the scene of a shooting that left 3 students dead and a fourth severely wounded. A friend of mine's daughter still is having trouble dealing with the aftermath 2 years later

Yeah I get that there is a school shooter problem but is there a problem using an intermediary to relay information to first responders? Do first responders not have enough going on in their heads they need to talk to a frantic 4th grade teacher directly as a shooter blows the brains out of her students right in front of her? Do the teachers and students still feel unsafe and will this change anything?

I realize that the article is missing a lot of technical details but they are not giving the schools police radios.

This system works similar to Motobridge. The schools on site UHF MotoTrbo System can be patched to the public safety 800 MHz P25 trunk on demand by a dispatcher. The schools also have the ability to patch together individual schools to each other or to the school bus P25 talk group.

That's not really what I meant but you bring up an excellent point about how all this race to waste complex trunking systems on separate bands has made sensible interoperability a major ordeal.

 

[kg9nn]

I've engineered phone systems for a number of schools. We ended up having break the phone lines up into three trunk groups: inbound, outbound, and PS/ALI. The problems we encountered were:
- As soon as parents heard something was going down, they flooded the school with calls and blocked PSAP call back.
- Because of the flood of incoming calls, no additional outgoing (including 911) calls could be made.
- During an emergency, staff members would flood our outbound lines with "I'm okay" calls.
- We tried 911 preemption but that didn't pass legal muster and created new problems.

As a result, when a 911 call is made, it now goes on a dedicated trunk and the caller ID displayed at the PSAP is a unique number which comes in on that dedicated trunk group. Now we have good, workable 911 service.

The only problem now is that emergencies happen during after school events and all the phones are locked in offices and classrooms. We have to hope we can get an administrator / keyholder and convince them to remain at that phone in case there's a callback instead of returning to the scene.

 

[N5TWB]

This seems to me like creating a problem that doesn't actually exist.

My favorite way of saying that: If this is the solution/answer, what was the question?

 

[scannerdaddy]

knee jerk reaction to t.j. lane shooting.

 

[sc800]

I saw an analog receiver a year or so ago that seemed to have a similar use in mind. It's called the Safeceiver. It was meant to give school personnel the ability to monitor a channel and listen for directions.

The problem with this system is that teachers are not trained for radio discipline and could easily overwhelm the system or clog it up.

I think that is being used in more than just schools. Isn't that the system that a lot of legislatures and Congress use? It can be set off either by capitol police in emergencies, or by the leaders for call backs for important votes and things like that

 

[Boatanchor]

Motorola are such good Corporate Citizens

Without comment..

 

[aimedtoannoy]

I would like to add that lake county has similar set ups, pretty much EVERY department has a motorola radio and uses the MARCS ip system, even the schools have them, and yes I know that chardon is in geauga. I think every school should have this set up, I think this could help first responders alot more than going into the school blind and having no idea where an incident is at. I don't want to bring up on what happened at chardon in 2012 but I think having a radio system like this could help prevent/ end and event like that alot faster.

 

[DisasterGuy]

In the system that I currently administer as well as the one that I formerly worked within we placed a desktop control station and a portable radio in every school. Each was left on a talkgroup monitored by the Board of Education office and the 9-1-1 center. While it was never for primary 9-1-1 reporting, it was great for times such as when telephones got jammed during the Virginia tremor and you needed to do a quick status check.

The actual school still runs on their in-house system, this simply provides a link to the county system. As we are working on the design for our P25 upgrade, we will be linking each conventional VHF/UHF in-house system to talkgroups on the 800 PS safety system so LE and F/EMS can directly access the school's radio channels. Even at that level it is pretty cheap and easy.

 

[sc800]

That's kind of like how the system I worked for as a dispatcher did it. The entire county including schools were on the same radio system with different talkgroups. Hitting the Orange Emergency button put that radio onto a special talkgroup monitored by the 911 center. The only problems we had with it were a lot of false activations and some people using it when a phone would be better (Ever try to give EMD over a radio?)

 

[Jakeportland]

Which system are they on

Which system are they on

 

[codblackops2]

I remember when I was a volunteer FF in Ohio actually in Washington County some FD's would have the Schools freq's programmed into there HT's to beable to communicate with the schools and also the Locals SO would have the ablitly to communicate with them also. All of us was on the UHF bands and pretty close freqs so there was not any problems with them going over to our channels. Only the officers of the Department would beable to commuincate with the school and also there was some of the volunteer FD personnel that actually worked in the schools that carried there HT's with them and have even quicker relay to dispatch then anyone else.

I also have mixed feelings with the schools having access to a already being crowded spectrum on the Public Safety bands also. But as everyone says the goverment will always do what they want as long as people let them