GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — The Green Bay School Board voted 6-1 Monday night to buy a $1.8 million security alarm system that will be installed in all schools.
"If you talk to teachers, especially since the pandemic, about the behaviors in our schools, they are really asking for additional support," Green Bay Area Public School District Chief Operations Officer Josh Patchak said during the meeting.
The District is purchasing the security system from CENTEGIX.
The company of that security system is based out of Atlanta, Ga.
The agreement between the District and the company is for five years.
"A lot of the other products that have been brought to us require devices and electronic equipment being wired in the buildings, which is going to take twice as long, if not longer, to get into place along with additional cost," Safety and Security Manager Chris Collar said during the meeting.
Here's how the system works.
Patchak says each staff member will wear a badge that they can press if there's an emergency or other situation.
The system also has strobe lights that will flash depending on the incident.
"Any individual teacher with a badge by pressing it multiple, multiple times is able to initiate a lockdown," Patchak said in an interview.
Interim Superintendent Vicki Bayer said that earlier in the year, there was a swatting incident that happened at one of the schools.
Swatting is when someone makes a fake call that brings out the SWAT team.
It's the reason why the District has been wanting to move forward with this system.
"Anytime we have an incident, we debrief, and afterwards recognized there was a concern about communication in rooms that are typically loud," Bayer said during the meeting.
Patchak says the District aims to have the system ready by the fall.
Board treasurer Nancy Welch was the lone school board member to vote against the purchase.
