NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — The recent deadly school shooting down in Georgia has prompted another round of reviews of school safety techniques and technology.
2 On Your Side checked in with some local school leaders for their perspective on the silent alarm devices suggested, even by Governor Hochul for teachers.
In the wake of the recent school, shooting case in Georgia, some national network news coverage focused on the silent alarm device said to be used by a teacher to pinpoint the location of the student armed with a rifle and reduce the response time of school resource officers to confront the 14-year-old who surrendered.
It may have saved lives and similar devices connected to police have been promoted by the state of New York with the passage in 20222 of Alyssa's Law which is named for a student killed in the 2018 Florida Parkland School mass shooting.
Governor Hochul said back then "It's not a mandate but I stand by here today and ask all school districts to adopt this. Please consider this technology to protect your students and your staff."
So now Niagara Falls School Superintendent Mark Laurrie told us "We have not had a really big push for these teacher ID sensors. We haven't had that big push in Niagara Falls. I'm sure in some districts they work well. Our whole goal is to stop any situation far before it even gets to the front door."
Laurrie and other superintendents we surveyed said they favor the locked, secured school approach.
And there is other technology like the Artificial Intelligence-guided Zero Eyes system used by Niagara Falls and Grand Island schools to have surveillance cameras specifically detect any outside threat first.
He explained "Picks up any weapon in a parking lot before someone could enter the school. You need to see one-eighth of an inch of any type of weapon and it would sound an immediate alarm to the Niagara Falls Police Department, to the school resource officers, and to the administrators."
Of course, there are also police school resource and safety officers and numerous monitored cameras for schools but school leaders feel safety plans must be tailored.
Superintendent Laurrie says "Small rural schools have a set of issues. Large districts like Buffalo and Niagara Falls have a set of issues. So I think it really is best left to the school districts and I think people like to have their own conversations with their school boards and their communities."
Laurrie is also concerned that accidental false alarms with those devices for teachers could cause panic in a school..
And while some districts on Long Island and Rochester have them, some teachers say those phone app alarms are not always user-friendly for an emergency.
Finally, local district leaders feel it is just as important to have staff awareness of mental health issues for students and make sure there is proper access to mental health counseling for affected students. The lack of such support for the students in Georgia was also brought up in the news coverage.