School Emergency Notification Systems



School Emergency Notification Systems











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School Emergency
Notification Systems

by Faulkner Staff

Copyright 2019, Faulkner Information Services. All
Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00011467

Publication Date: 1904

Report Type: TUTORIAL

Preview

School emergency notification systems have become essential pieces of
technology for educational institutions at all levels. Primarily used to communicate with
faculty, students, and parents in the event of an emergency, schools are
now also using them to announce school closings due to bad weather or even to find substitutes when teachers call out sick. The best systems
provide multiple channels of communication, allowing schools to send
messages via landline and mobile telephones, text messages, e-mail,
television, digital signs, and social media. With the complications added
by new modes of communications, vendors and school administrators are
following the US federal government’s lead in the development of smart
management systems based on the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). This
report reviews multi-modal systems, the different needs of K-12 and campus
systems, recent innovations, and provides recommendations to follow when
choosing a system.

Report Contents:

Executive Summary

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Unfortunately, there are several reasons why schools need to have an
emergency notification system – violence, bomb threats, intruders in the
building, severe weather, fires, or even
problems within the building. With so
many potential threats, schools need to be able to quickly and clearly
notify students, parents, faculty, and the public when there is an
emergency, and these systems need to be able to communicate through
multiple channels in order to be most effective.

Increasingly, it is necessary to include social media as a channel for
alerts. The ubiquitous use of Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat by students
is well known, and these tools can be effective because they can be short
mass messages to a variety of devices. While the multi-modal approach is a
necessity for a campus community with residential students and faculty, it
may not be necessary for the majority of elementary and secondary schools.
The obvious feature of the lower grades is that the majority of the direct
population are located in a single building, and a group of students and
their teacher reside in a single classroom most of the day. The difference
between
“locking down” a high school versus locking down a college or university is
easy to understand.

In addition, communication in a single-school elementary, middle, or high
school building can be almost instantaneous through the public address
system. Students and teachers can hear any announcement no matter where in
the school they happen to be, even on adjacent playing fields in many
cases. The goal of emergency notification systems in K-12 schools is first
to notify all necessary emergency personnel and, secondly, the
notification of parents that there is an existing emergency.

The notification of emergency personnel needs to be done as quickly as
possible, but there is no critical time factor for parental notification
unless there is a specific action required of the parents. In some K-12
situations, it would be better if parents did not show up at the school
too early, since the building may be locked down.

While it is not easy to predict what system is best for a school or
university, many of the systems on the market are extremely flexible and
will cover almost all the alerting needs required. The number of alert
modes to be used, the number of alerts that must be sent, and the speed with
which alerts must go out affect the decision of which system to select.
Delay in selecting a system, however, leaves students and staff in a
vulnerable position.

Figure 1. Example of Emergency Notification via Text Message

Figure 1. Example of Emergency Notification via Text Message

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Market Dynamics

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Threats Driving the Need for Emergency Notification Systems

The US National School Safety Center has cataloged twenty separate
threats for which vigilant schools and campuses must plan: 1

  1. Civil unrest, demonstrations, or rioting
  2. Intruders or unauthorized visitors
  3. Hostage situations
  4. Sniper attacks
  5. Extortion
  6. Incidents of assault, battery, or rape
  7. Bomb threats and explosions
  8. People possessing weapons
  9. Drug abuse or trafficking
  10. Gang-related violence, such as drive-by shootings
  11. Kidnappings and abductions
  12. Incidents of child abuse, neglect, or molestation
  13. Outbreaks of life-threatening illness
  14. Accidental injury or death
  15. Intentional injury or death
  16. Utility failures
  17. Chemical spills
  18. Vehicle accidents
  19. Natural disasters
  20. Incidents involving mass transit, such as bus accidents or a train
    derailment

While some of these incidents may seem like unlikely threats for some
schools, the reality is that every school can wind up experiencing one or
more of the items on this list. Some of the threats on this list can
happen anywhere, regardless of the school’s location or the socioeconomic
makeup of its students. 

School administrators or security officials are challenged with
determining the risks associated with each type of threat and then
creating procedures to prevent them from happening and managing them if
they do. Even then, they need to know when to activate the incident
response plans.

Many of the violent threats that schools receive wind up being hoaxes,
but administrators still need to treat them as legitimate. For example, in
2016, the Los Angeles Unified School District received a hoax bomb threat
that forced the nation’s second largest school district to close 900
campuses and 187 public charter schools. This kept 640,000 students out of
school and cost the school district an estimated $29 million. 2 This
type of wide-scale bomb threat is rare, but unfortunately, threats against
individual schools seems to be occurring more frequently. The Educator’s
School Safety Network says that there were 3,380 threats recorded in the
2017-2018 school year, a 62 percent increase from the 2,085 threats recorded for
the 2016-2017 school year.3

The following chart shows that there were at least 279
incidents of violence this
past school year, compared to 131 events in the 2016-2017 school year.
This amounts to an increase of 113 percent.

Figure 2. Recent Violent Threats Against Schools

Figure 2. Recent Violent Threats Against Schools

Source: The Educator’s Safety Network

Legal Requirements: The Clery Act

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime
Statistics Act (Clery Act) requires every Title IV institution
(essentially every institution participating in federal student financial
assistance programs), without exception, to have and disclose response and
evacuation procedures for a significant emergency or dangerous situation
involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or
employees occurring on the campus.

Schools covered under Clery must:

  • Have documented procedures to notify the campus community whenever
    there is a significant emergency or dangerous situation that poses an
    immediate threat to the health and safety of the school’s employees or
    students. The law leaves it up to the institution to figure out how
    they will communicate that information to the community, but it
    recommends they use multiple methods to make sure everyone who should
    receive the message gets it.

  • List the steps that the school uses to confirm that a threat is
    legitimate.

  • Identify who will be notified when there are certain types of
    emergencies. For example, if there is a fire in one building on a
    university campus, the school may only want to notify students who
    have classes in that building. On the other hand, a more severe
    emergency like someone on campus with a gun would warrant notifying
    everyone.

  • Identify who at the school is responsible for using the emergency
    notification systems.

  • Include procedures for notifying people who live outside the
    immediate school community, such as parents or people living in the
    immediate area.

  • Test the plan at least annually.

Emergency Notification Technologies

Table 1 identifies the various technologies that can be employed to
affect emergency notification, whether for a school or commercial campus
environment. Some are traditional, like sirens and public address systems;
others represent cutting-edge capabilities, like social networking.

Table 1. Emergency Notification Technologies

Technology

Pros

Cons

Automated ENS

  • Automated messages can reach thousands of people
    concurrently through mobile phones, landlines, email, faxes,
    text messages, or social media. The ability to reach people
    through multiple channels is compatible with today’s mobile
    communications culture.

  • Security officials can send messages to different groups
    of people, depending on the severity of the threat.

  • Schools can implement a turnkey solution from third-party
    providers.

  • The technology is flexible enough that it can be used to
    send non-emergency messages to people as well, thus
    providing a higher return on investment.

  • An automated system can be ineffective it the school does
    not have a clearly defined scope of when to use it.

  • Using these types of systems require an infrastructure
    investment.

Audio Public Address System

  • Public address systems are an easy way to get people’s
    attention.

  • They can provide continuous updates to people who are on
    the move.

  • Even someone who does not have access to a computer or a
    smartphone can receive updates.

  • A PA system might not be effective if the school has thick
    walls.

  • Schools have to have the infrastructure in place.

  • They don’t work for deaf students.

Video Public Address System

  • Video public address systems can reach hearing-impaired
    students that a regular PA system cannot.

  • They can provide a silent alarm that may escape a
    perpetrator’s notice.

  • People being notified need to have access to a monitor.

  • Students need to notice that the monitor is displaying a
    special emergency notification.

  • Video message systems offer limited message space.

  • They don’t work for people who are blind.

  • Video PA systems require infrastructure investment.

Fire Alarm System

  • The 2007 edition of the National Fire Alarm Code (NFPA 72)
    has been amended to allow fire alarm systems to be used
    for mass notification.

  • Schools all have fire alarm systems, so there are no
    additional infrastructure costs.

  • Fire alarm systems are only useful in prompting
    evacuations.

  • They do not have the ability to relay specific
    information.

  • False alarms are so common that people may ignore the
    alarm.

Siren

  • Sirens can alert people without access to mobile
    communications devices.

  • Sirens are only effective within a small radius.

  • They cannot communicate specific information.

Radio

  • Radio is ideal for people who are in their vehicles.

  • It can provide a steady stream of information.

  • People need to be in range of their radios in order to
    receive information.

Television

  • Television can provide a steady stream of information and
    works well in situations when people are warned to stay in
    their homes.

  • Like radios, people need to be near their televisions to
    receive updates.

Social Media

  • Social media has become very popular with people of any
    age.

  • People can access it from almost anywhere, on computers or
    smartphones.

  • Social media is the preferred way to communicate emergency
    information to certain groups, especially young people.

  • May be difficult to prevent the posting of false,
    misleading, or deliberately deceptive content.

Dark Site

  • A dark site is a pre-existing, but normally dormant,
    website where people can go for emergency management
    information and instructions.

  • They can provide school-specific information, including
    access to emergency management and business continuity
    plans.

  • These sites must be faithfully maintained by enterprise
    officials to ensure information accuracy and relevance

Emergency Website

  • Schools can quickly set up an emergency website as an
    official news source.

  • Websites can be updated frequently, and the content can be
    written in a way that addresses any questions that parents
    or the media might have.

  • Emergency websites must be faithfully maintained by to
    ensure information accuracy and relevance.

Cloud-based Systems

  • Cloud-based emergency notification systems are both
    NIST-compliant and secure

  • They require a public cloud network for larger
    organizations

Market Leaders

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The following companies are among the leaders in emergency notification
systems for schools.

Blackboard Connect

Blackboard Connect is one of the leading providers of emergency
notification services to the education sector. The latest version of their
product, Blackboard Connect 5, has the following features:

  • Collaboration. Global AlertLink allows
    administrators to build teams before or during responses for planning
    and management.

  • Planning tools. The product allows schools to
    create an unlimited number of disaster scenarios and assign response
    plans to them.

  • Mapping. Global AlertLink has been touted for
    having very strong mapping capabilities. Users can see incidents on
    Bing, OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

  • Multiple communication channels. Administrators can
    send emergency notifications via telephone, email, or text, and they
    can target messages to certain groups, individuals, or devices.
    Separate messages can be sent out to students, parents, crisis teams,
    and other groups.

Everbridge

Everbridge promotes its notification system for distributing
announcements for emergencies like safety alerts, evacuations, health
emergencies, and class cancellations.

  • Notifications for different groups. Everbridge’s
    tool allows administrators to set up distribution lists for students,
    administrators, or crisis response teams.

  • Two-way communication. Everbridge is recognized as
    having a strong mobile app for end users. This application is capable
    of supporting two-way communication, and it can deliver messages to
    students as well as incident response personnel. Everbridge can send
    messages via text messages, social media, push notifications, email,
    and social media. Lastly, students and faculty can use the Everbridge
    mobile app to take pictures or video and send them back to
    administrators.

  • Manage response teams. The Everbridge tool can poll
    individuals on an incident response team to see if they are available
    and how quickly they can respond to an incident. Administrators can
    then create conference calls on the fly with those individuals to
    coordinate a response. They can also use the tool to dispatch campus
    police to an incident.

  • Interactive threat view. Everbridge’s system shows
    incidents on a map and a radius of the area that could be impacted by
    it.

  • Multiple communication channels. The system can
    send messages via telephone, email, text message, social media, or
    mobile push notification.

Global AlertLink

Global AlertLink offers a Campus Solution that is tailored for K-12 or
higher-education clients. The market their program as being built around
planning, communication, managing incidents, and connecting teams.
Features of their product include:

  • Collaboration. Global AlertLink allows
    administrators to build teams before or during responses for planning
    and management.

  • Planning tools. The product allows schools to
    create an unlimited number of disaster scenarios and assign response
    plans to them.

  • Mapping. Global AlertLink has been touted for
    having very strong mapping capabilities. Users can see incidents on
    Bing, OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

  • Multiple communication channels. Administrators
    can send emergency notifications via telephone, email, or text, and
    they can target messages to certain groups, individuals, or devices.
    Separate messages can be sent out to students, parents, crisis teams,
    and other groups.

Honeywell

Honeywell provides Instant Alert and Instant Alert Plus. They are
customizable, cloud-based emergency and mass notification systems that
convey instant communication via voice, text, and email. They are off-site
and redundant. Instant Alert for Schools is designed for K-12
schools, and Instant Alert Plus is intended for higher education,
commercial buildings, utilities, government, health care, and industrial
markets. Features include:

  • Professional Support. Hosted, cloud-based support is
    offered, as are training and unlimited messaging.
  • Activation Methods. Users can activate alerts from a
    web interface, and send alerts using a 24/7/365 staffed help desk, if
    Internet is unavailable.
  • Delivery. Mass alerts can be delivered via multiple
    devices.
  • Messaging. Messages can be recorded, or can use an
    electronic, text-to-speech voice.

MIR3

MIR3’s Intelligent Notification system is designed to help schools manage
emergencies. Some features include:

  • Ability to track responses. Intelligent
    Notification allows schools to log and tally responses from everyone
    who receives notifications. This information is available in real-time
    reporting.

  • Collaboration. School administrators can use the
    system to pull together ad hoc conference calls based on the type of
    emergency.

  • Multiple channels. Notifications can be sent via
    landline or mobile telephone, text message, TTY, fax, or IP-enabled
    device. Messages can be sent in English, Spanish, French, German,
    Dutch, Japanese, and Arabic. Administrators can send out an emergency
    notification through a web portal, email, lr making a phone call.

  • Customizable delivery options. End users can choose
    the way they prefer to be contacted, but administrators have the
    ability to override these preferences in case of an emergency.

  • Cascade notifications. This function lets
    administrators send a message to one person or a group. Then, based on
    their response, they can automatically send a message to a larger
    audience.

Omnilert

Omnilert’s emergency notification product is called e2Campus and is used
by K-12 and higher education schools. Some of the features are:

  • Collaboration. The e2Campus application to activate
    an emergency response strategy with a single button. Using the tool,
    they can initiate a conference call with a scho#ergency response team,
    page first responders and tell them to check in or report to a certain
    location, and text students.

  • Multiple communication channels. The tool can send
    notifications via voice, text, emails, or social media. It can also be
    used to display alerts on campus television stations or digital signs.
    The system can send up to 120,000 emails and 30,000 calls per minute.

  • Inbound hotline. Omnilert offers an add-on service
    where it staffs an inbound call center to help field calls from
    students or parents in the event of an emergency.

  • Limited advanced features. Some reviews point out
    that Omnilert does not have a lot of advanced features, but the product
    is still ideal for small- to mid-sized schools.

Send Word Now

Send Word Now sells its program to K-12 as well colleges and
universities.

  • Multiple channels. Send Word Now can notify
    students, parents, and faculty of an emergency through voice, email,
    text message, or fax. The system can support sending more than a
    million messages an hour.

  • Two-way communication. The Get Word Back feature
    allows students and teachers to respond to messages and let
    administrators know if they are OK or need help.

  • Audit trail. The AlertTracer feature puts time and
    date stamps on every message sent and received so school
    administrators can make sure messages were sent out promptly and to
    the right people.

  • Ad-hoc conferencing. Send Word Now allows
    administrators to instantly set up conference calls with up to 200
    people without needing to set up a bridge with dial-in numbers and
    passcodes.

  • Ability to integration with HR systems. The system
    can integrate with a school’s contact data base to ensure contract
    records are always up to date.

  • Virtual message boards. In addition to sending
    messages via email, text, or telephone, Send Word Now includes a virtual
    message board where students, faculty, and parents can read and post
    messages.

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The two biggest recent developments to emergency notification systems
are the addition of social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter as
alert media, and the increased support for the use of systems-of-systems,
usually based on the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), to allow systems to
communicate with other systems.

Social Media

A major challenge for ENS administrators is to keep up with the way that
students communicate. Given the wide range of ages attending universities,
no single mode is effective enough to be inclusive. Younger students
eschew email as being outdated, while older students may be heavy users.
In the same way, wireline phones are used by few young students but remain
a staple of communications for older students. The latest technology that
has captured the attention of young students is the social media
phenomenon. Administrators and ENS vendors have taken notice, and many are
including social media contacts as part of a multi-modal approach. In the
current market, emergency systems that do not use social media are simply
only half as effective as systems that use it. Social media has not,
however, replaced the need to use other media, including phones and the
9-1-1 system.

At this point primarily limited to Facebook and Twitter, the addition of
these channels will be increasingly popular in the future. Twitter is used
by a number of police forces already and they are prepared to receive
Twitter messages from colleges and universities. Additional channels will
appear as Web services continue to develop different modes of
communications.

Systems-of-Systems

A number of vendors and school administrators have begun to understand
that concentrating on the mode of communication and waiting to develop
software updates to add new ones is probably not the most efficient method
of handling emergency alerting. Thus, interest in smart management systems
is growing rapidly. Essentially, a system-of-systems would be flexible
enough to quickly add or subtract contact channels and communicate with
other systems and other vendors’ systems. A system-of-systems could be
used to:

  • Make calls based on various lists of special groups, by geography, or
    by interest.
  • Place calls to mobile devices based on the device’s location.
  • Control sirens, digital signage, and PA systems by campus or building.
  • Post messages on social media sites.
  • Pop up messages on computers through instant messaging.
  • Send text messages via priority pathways.
  • Ensure that special needs individuals are alerted through
    Telecommunication for the Deaf (TDD), and other means – emails, Braille
    displays on computers, and/or Web sites designed for screen readers.
  • Broadcast messages to encoded receivers over FM.
  • Deliver alerts through cable television overrides.
  • Deliver messages to over-the-air and Web media.

Most smart management systems would work with CAP, a single message
format that could handle all the existing means of alerting and those yet
to come. CAP doesn’t rely on a particular vendor or channel, so it can be
used to reach students through multiple means. CAP is being supported by
more and more vendors and has been adopted by the US Department of
Homeland Security, local governments, and recommended by the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU). The UCLA ENS is the largest CAP-based
system-of-systems in the higher education market, but the California
legislature has adopted a government-industry partnership to develop a
statewide system, as have Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Strategic Planning Implications

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Since there is such a vast difference between K-12 schools and
residential colleges and universities, different products and services are
available for the two markets.

K-12 Schools

The simplest plan for dealing with emergencies in public schools after
developing the security plan is to make sure that the public address
system is working properly in all areas of the school, including
cafeterias, hallways, gymnasiums, and, if possible, adjacent areas such as
parking lots, sidewalks, and playing fields.

Another helpful system available to public schools are hazard warning
radios that the US government has supplied to all 97,000 public schools in
the US. The National Weather Service (NWS), part of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), operates more than 950 short-range
radio stations and has encouraged schools, businesses, and homeowners to
buy warning radios that are activated with a broadcast signal that
automatically turns a radio on and announces a potential hazard.

During an emergency, the NWS interrupts routine weather radio programming
and broadcasts a special tone that activates weather radios, by county, in
the listening areas. Originally conceived as a means to deliver weather
warnings, the system now covers all hazards, such as:

  • Terrorism
  • Abducted children (Red Alerts)
  • Derailed trains carrying toxic materials

While hazard-warning radios will help alert schools to a crisis, or
impending crisis, the responsibility to act on that warning remains with
the individual schools. It should be noted, too, that this program is
contemplated for public schools, not private schools. Private schools
clearly face the same risks as public institutions.

Many states have adopted ENSs for which citizens and schools can sign up.
The systems transmit warnings of weather events, Red and Gray Alerts,
terroristic threats, and other events considered to be of an emergency
nature. The alerts can be transmitted by phone, email, text message, and
through Website updates.

School Communication Systems. As opposed to full-blown
ENSs, which are seen as over-kill for the K-12 market, school notification
systems (SCS) are designed to communicate with emergency personnel and
parents, not necessarily students. The systems evolved from a simple
system to make sure that parents knew what was going on with their
children in school to include emergency notifications. Good systems
include many or all of the following:

  • Emergency notifications
  • Report cards
  • Test notifications
  • Holiday or schedule changes
  • Detention or tardy notifications
  • Group, club, or team news
  • School board reminders

The emergency notification part of the SCS came as a result of the
shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in April 1999. Since that
time, there have been a number of incidents of shootings, planned
shootings, bomb threats, intrusions, and other emergency situations that
require the use of SCS products and, of course, lockdowns.

The majority of SCS products on the market use phone calls to alert
parents. Systems today use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to reduce
expenses. The SCS can use pre-recorded messages for the quickest means of
contacting parents, but can also be customized for individual
notification.

Systems can use paging, short messaging service (SMS), e-mail alerts, and
increasingly social media. Full-fledged communications systems operate
much as a corporate phone system does with the addition of emergency
services. These systems can provide room monitoring service, often include
the public address system, and can even lockdown or open individual rooms.

Colleges and Universities

As discussed previously, college and university campuses have much larger
problems communicating with students and faculty. Most students are in
class only short portions of each day and cannot be expected to be in
their living quarters when not in class. The options of where they might
be at any given time are myriad. The same is often true of professors who
are busy with research, office hours, classroom time, and off-campus
commitments. Communicating emergency alerts under these circumstances
would seem to be impossible until you consider the everyday habits of
young people.

The fact is that the overwhelming majority of students carry cellphones.
A study by M-Metrics, now owned by ComScore, found that roughly 17.0
million college students have cellphones, or 97 percent of the 17.5
million full- and part-time graduate and post-graduate level students. In
addition, many students and professors carry PDAs, smartphones, and tablet
and laptop computers. Finally, many colleges and universities have some
form of public address system.

Using all of these modes of communication, it should be possible to
contact a majority of the students and faculty quickly and effectively.
This breaks down when one mode or another is relied upon to the exclusion
of all other modes, which was a contributory reason for the large number
of students killed at Virginia Tech, although by no means the only one.

Emergency Notification Systems. Although not designed
specifically for the college and university market, ENSs have been
deployed by many campuses, especially after the shootings at Virginia Tech
University in April 2007 and the enactment of the Clery Act. The systems
come in two basic flavors with most providers offering an outsourced
option and an on-site option.

The outsourced option is often preferred for two reasons:

  • First, the cost of maintaining the large number of dial-out lines
    needed for timely notification in the event of an emergency.
  • Second, the very real possibility that a disaster may wipe out any
    local notification infrastructure, especially if such infrastructure is
    co-located with other vulnerable IT systems.

Recommendations

It is not possible to over-emphasize the importance of an ENS for
schools, colleges, and universities. When it is literally a matter of life
and death, students, parents, and faculty deserve the best system that is
feasible. It is clear from industry consensus and hard experience that a
multi-modal approach to campus security is essential. Technology is
useless if an alert is not sent to those at risk, and the best protocols
are simply good plans, which require people and technology to successfully
implement. Here are the essential first steps:

  1. Develop an ENS plan. A list should be made of what the threats are in
    order of likelihood and used against plan and system design. Consider
    existing systems and other security measures to determine if they are
    effective and can continue to be used going forward. The plan also
    must include the modes of communications desired, how many people will
    need to be alerted in a worst-case scenario, and whether a system will
    be hosted or maintained in-house. Maybe, the most important decision
    is under what scenarios will an alert be sent. Remember that it is
    better to err by sending too many alerts than failing to do so in a
    true emergency.

  2. Create a list of vendors that offer the modes of notification desired
    and the type of system that is to be installed.

  3. If the system is to be a large one in terms of geography, number of
    people alerted, and modes of notification, consider a
    systems-of-systems approach when asking for bids.

  4. Evaluate the vendor responses in terms of price, the ability to
    customize a system, speed of alerts, modes of communication, and
    vendor reputation. Consider how the systems will fit in with
    existing security, including personnel.

  5. Check references to make sure that the vendor’s system does what it
    advertises, whether there are hidden costs that the vendor has not
    revealed, and how installation of the system went. These are true
    whether the system is hosted or installed on premise.

  6. Install the system chosen either by using internal personnel, if they
    are technically able to do so, or by using a system integrator that
    previously worked with the system. (This may be the vendor, itself.)

  7. Customize the system as decided upon when the plan was created.

  8. Test the system on a regular basis. The vendor should be able to set
    up a schedule for system testing, which should be followed to the
    letter.

  9. Evaluate the effectiveness of the system at least once per year. Are
    there new modes of alerting that should be considered? Can the current
    system support them? If an upgrade is necessary, will it be done by the
    vendor or by internal staff?

References

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1 “Homeland Security: The Role of Schools in a Post 9/11
Environment.” Schoolsafety.us. July 15, 2014.

2 Lenzo, Krysia. “The Real Cost of a Bomb Threat at Your
Kid’s School.” CNBC. February 3, 2016.

3 Klinger, Amy and Klinger, Amanda. “Violent Threats and Incidents
in Schools: An Analysis of the 2017-2018 School Year.” Educators
School Safety Network. 

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