Instant, Reliable Communications for Safer, More Productive Schools

Learn how Motorola Solutions helped School District 214 develop a Team Communications solution to enable district-wide communications that keeps their personnel connected and their staff and students safe.

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00:02 District 214 covers about 62 square miles, slightly larger than the city of St. Louis.

00:06 We’ve got an enrollment varies anywhere from 12, 500 to 13, 000 students comprised across 7 campuses.

00:14 It’s the second largest high school district in Illinois.

00:17 We’re an incredibly innovative school district that’s always looking for best practices for students and new technologies.

00:24 It’s an exciting place to work.

00:25 Every single staff member carries a radio at all times.

00:30 The expectation is that they are always turned on.

00:32 We utilize them constantly throughout the day.

00:35 Some of the biggest challenges that our radio users previously were having was just the connectivity because the systems were not interconnected at all between buildings and sometimes even within the building they weren’t connected.

00:46 We were actually using radios that were from back in the 60s; repeaters from back in the 50s.

00:52 In the old system, it was the building’s responsibility to manage their own system, and we decided to bring it all in house as a district asset as opposed to school asset

1:01 In management of the fleet, we’ve told the buildings, you know, if you need accessories, if you need new batteries, just need service, whatever, we will take care of it and that’s put the buildings at ease knowing that we’re going to manage it, and we just budget it going forward through our central maintenance department’s budget.

1:18 Meeting with Motorola, we knew that we had this commitment, that we were going to be partners in this.

1:25 There have been a few events that have really reaffirmed our decision to upgrade this system.

1:31 We had a pretty scary situation, um, about a year ago involving a student, and I was able to go to a channel where I was able to communicate with just certain high level administrators about what was going on which was so much more effective when I’m in the middle of leading a crisis, than trying to text somebody.

1:49 I think that’s the way that it’s changed the most, is having a sense of safety and security in our ability to communicate.

1:55 Yes, we have phones, but, you know, the delay in texting, the delay in calling, it could jeopardize safety.

2:03 Big difference between the cell phone communication and using two-way radios is that with cell phones we’re reliant on the cellphone network.

2:10 For example, in this building, just the way that it’s constructed it is really hard to get a cell signal, whereas with two-way radios you pick it up and it’s connected, you got that right now, instant communication.

2:20 We’ve had students walk out into the middle of the street before, we’ve had to do lockdowns. We’ve had many different situations where the radios are absolutely critical, there is no way we could function without them.

2:30 We use ‘em daily, they’re a big part of our job.

2:38 Sometimes the radios need to be updated, so I have a laptop and I’m able to program the radios to the specific school, and then update them if they need to be updated.

2:46 Like any other school district, we’ve had our share of emergency or crisis events.

2:50 When those happen, we need that reliable, instant communication, and we need to know what’s gonna happen.

2:55 The safety and security of the students, and the staff, and the general public using the buildings is the core, critical function of the system which it has proved itself over time and time again.