HARLINGEN – The Sandy Hook and Uvalde shootings have set off the most visceral of emotions for parents everywhere.
Scenes from those incidents show terrified parents enduring minutes and hours trying to determine their children’s fates.
Certainly no one wants another parent to endure that horror. The new Raptor Alert System which will soon be implemented here will address that.
Danny Castillo, director of emergency management and school safety for the Harlingen school district, said another important function of the new system is “true student and staff accountability.”
“In the event of an activation response, at the classroom level as well as the district level, we’ll have the ability to account for everybody – teachers, students and staff members – and not only that but also confirm their status,” Castillo said. “Every individual will be able to indicate whether or not they are OK, if they need emergency medical treatment.”
Of equal importance will be the ability to identify those unaccounted for – and take quick action.
“It helps us to focus our efforts along with first responders to identify the well-being of those individuals that are present within our campuses,” he said. “First responders and other authorized users will also be able to know where every student is and also their condition during an emergency.”
This student accountability component will allow responders and other selected Raptor Alert users to reunify parents and students, what Castillo called a “reunification” effort. In this action, any guardian listed for a particular student will receive automatic notifications in text messages and emails.
In this way, Castillo said, there is clear complete communication with everyone associated with that particular student.
