Ohio District Overhauls Its 2-Way Radios
In order to comply with the rapidly approaching FCC narrowbanding mandate and ease communication between its campuses and first responders, the South-Western City School District underwent a major radio system upgrade. The new system allows for district-wide communication with digital radios, GPS tracking on buses and instant access to the Grove City police dispatch center.
Here, a transportation supervisor tracks school buses using the GPS capabilities of the buses’ MOTOTRBO XPR 4350 digital radios.
“When we talked about needs and what we could do, the same partnership that helped us write our emergency response plans helped us with our radio system,” Sigrist explains. “You know that old expression, ‘the first time you meet the fire chief or the police chief shouldn’t be at your emergency’? We’ve gone past that. We know who they are, and they know who we are. “
Talk Groups Connect District With Police
The district created a talk group on its radio system dedicated to Grove City police. If an administrator or bus driver has an emergency, they can turn to the police channel and immediately reach dispatch. Even if the emergency is located outside of the Grove City police’s jurisdiction (about half of the district’s 31 campuses are located outside the city), dispatch will relay the message to the appropriate department.
“[The campuses] are spread over the other five department or four law enforcement jurisdictions, so what happens is, because of our relationship with the Grove City police, it doesn’t matter if your building is in the city of Columbus or you don’t have access to a cell phone,” Sigrist says. “[Grove City police] will get the help immediately to you.”
This was easily achieved using Motorola’s MOTOTRBO platform, according to Kevin Read, MOTOTRBO business development manager.
“In this case, the public safety organization had their own radio system, but because MOTOTRBO has interoperability capabilities, they’re able to connect together a talk
group from the public safety system back into a talk group on the district system,” Read says. “Security users in the district were able to interact in real time with radio users from the public safety system. And that’s a pretty common occurrence in the schools these days when we’re installing MOTOTRBO systems.”
Not Everyone Needs Digital Radios
It’s possible that in less than a decade, the FCC will require all radios to be digital. However, in the meantime, a gradual migration to digital radios can be a more cost-effective option.
“Even some existing systems out there, depending on their age, might be able to have a basic reprograming done to allow it to be narrowbanded,” Read says.
SWCS’ MOTOTRBO XPR 6550 portable two-way radios are digital and feature-rich, but are only used by campus administrators.
Sigrist is equipped with one of these radios, which he can use to “contact any principal in any building district-wide.”
“You don’t need a radio like that for the custodian, and you don’t need a radio like that for the hall monitor or the attendance office,” he says. Bus drivers, however, use MOTOTRBO XPR 4350 radios, which offer a slew of safety features.
To cut costs, the district opted to purchase CP200 XLS analog portable two-way radios for non-administrative staff such as teachers and custodians. Giving simple push-to-talk radios to most staff members has not been a problem, Sigrist says, because “99.9% of the time, [staff] is … not taking advantage of the repeater; they’re not talking outside of the building. They’re using it as radios need to be used every day in a building.”
In the event of an emergency, however, staff using CP200 XLS can change the channel to reach Sigrist or other administrators. Then, the administrator can use his or her digital radio to send out an alert district-wide — using the district’s announcement channel to ask that radio users to turn to the district emergency channel or administration channel.
Sigrist says the analog CP200 XLS radios cost about $300 per unit. “It would have been a waste of money to buy $800 radios when [teachers and other staff] don’t need that capability,” he claims. “And that’s why we have the blended system of both digital and analog.”
If the district does opt to use all-digital radios in the future, it won’t be a problem, Read says. “Since MOTOTRBO works on analog and digital, sometimes what we see is that people will start adding MOTOTRBO radios to their system slowly over time, operating in an analog mode, because that’s what their radios operate today. And then once they have a sufficient amount of MOTOTRBO radios in their radio fleet, they’ll basically flip the switch to digital and get all these advanced capabilities that you have with a digital system.”
Repeater Has Back-up Power
The district’s Mototurbo XPR 8300 repeater is “the central infrastructure for the communications system,” Read explains. “It’s what allows you to get wide area coverage between different schools. [A repeater is] typically connected to a radio antenna tower, and that’s what really gives you high antenna coverage so you can reach out to all the different schools and also reach the surrounding areas to get radio traffic out to the buses.”
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