Instant Communications – Protecting our Schools

By now, we’ve all read or watched the reports about two armed gunmen storming the STEM School Highlands Ranch just outside Denver, Colorado this past week. Several lives were saved thanks to the heroic actions of a few on campus. Further, the local sheriff’s department deployed emergency radios to each campus which also contributed to the speedy response from public safety.

Prior to the event, the local Sheriff’s office provided campuses with a police radio. This radio provided the campus staff with a direct link to field officers on the beat. As a result, the Sheriff’s Department reported a response time in just under 2 minutes once notified over the police radio. This response time is quite remarkable and captured our attention.

Beginning today, we are deploying police radios to each of our Aransas Pass ISD campuses. Our goal is to make sure the campuses have a direct link to the officers in the field. We will provide instruction, training, and work this program into our Standard Response Protocol drills which we perform regularly district-wide.

In addition, we have deployed 11 software defined radio solutions to members of the APISD security board. This board works directly with the police department to constantly improve security for both our students and staff and is made up of principals and assistant principals from each campus. This software solution allows each of the 11 ISD employees to communicate freely amongst themselves via their smart device. Additionally, our police radio is connected into the software and each of the 11 can both listen and communicate with the officers in the field from anywhere so long as they have a data connection on their device.

Finally, we have to thank those that made this project possible. Without the close working partnership with these two companies and their commitment to public safety excellence for both our officers and community, this project would not have come to fruition.

Thank you, Dailey-Wells!

Dailey-Wells out of San Antonio, Texas is our public safety radio vendor. They support all police, fire, and emergency public safety communications for almost the entire Coastal Bend area. Administration at Dailey Wells immediately got on board with our idea and donated $15,000.00 worth of radio equipment to the police department to be primarily used within APISD. Thank you!

Test Successful. Great job, Mrs. Hale!!

Thank you, TangoTango!

We also would like to thank TangoTango. TangoTango is our software vendor that supplies the software radio solution for smart devices. This software directly connects our police radio frequencies into the digital environment allowing public safety officials to communicate over the local radio infrastructure from anywhere in the world via a data connection. This software runs on computers, tablets, smartphones, and more.

“Thank you TangoTango and Dailey-Wells. We could not have completed this project without your buy-in and support!”