Need Help Choosing Affordable Radios for School Safety – Legal and Practical Questions

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Cell systems have a CND, critical need detector. When the need for communications is most critical is when the system decides to fail.
From the many after action reports I study.

Cell phone communications also proved to be difficult as cell towers quickly became overloaded and calls did not go through in a timely manner.

Cell towers are particularly vulnerable, a PSPS (public safety power shutdown) can shut down their power, or a fire can destroy them.

My notes from Uvalde show the school's radio system worked better than the public safety one.

Do a full coverage test with radios on the user's belt, not in the hand at head height which has better signal propagation. If a staff member needs to hide in a closet or maintenance room during a shooting make sure the radio works from there to someone who might be in an evacuation zone outside the building.

Do the test with full classrooms, humans absorb RF signals. What might work with only staff in the building could fail when the students are there. If the students have cell phones and wifi devices powered up that can add to what we call the RF noise floor, all those signals could degrade your radio's performance even if not in the same frequency band. I don't think I've seen a study on this but have heard of real world instances where this has happened.