A school district in Maryland has installed panic buttons in each of its 36 schools.
Frederick County Public Schools is completing the installation after receiving a $15,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Maryland Emergency Management Agency.
The panic buttons will be used to notify the district’s central office of any emergencies, according to the Frederick News Post. The button’s emergency line will go to the central office every day from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Outside of those hours the line will be linked to the cell phone of the district’s supervisor of security and emergency management.
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The buttons are already in place at 21 of the district’s schools and officials hope to have the alarms in every school’s front office by the end of next week. When the button is pressed a yellow box on the front office walls lights up and displays a message as an alarm sounds.
The district is also looking into tying the buttons to each school’s public address system to play a recorded announcement when they are pressed.
Under the current system people in the school must call 911 and then an emergency line to report an incident to the central office.
