Oak Park and River Forest High School will roll out a new app-based safety component this summer to make it easier for teachers and staff to initiate a schoolwide lockdown or shelter in place if the need arises.
The Emergency Management System from Houston-based Raptor Technologies will be introduced for summer school with an official introduction to all faculty and staff next fall, according to Kristen Devitt, director of campus safety.
Devitt said the district has, for several years, been using Raptor’s VisitorSafe visitor management system, a program used during the school day where anyone from outside of OPRF must sign in at the entrance and receive a visitor pass, thus tracking who is in the building at any time.
But the emergency management system is another step, according to Devitt.
“What that does is everybody will be able to install an app on their phones and it accesses kind of a panic button,” she said. “Any faculty and staff can download the app and initiate a lockdown or hold or shelter in place if necessary.”
With the app download and appropriate sign-in credentials, the Raptor system will be able to identify where a teacher is located in the event of an actual emergency, and what that teacher’s student roster is.
“It helps us keep track of our drills and requirements and has a limited mode of communication, so our administrators can talk to each other,” Devitt said. ‘It’s pretty easy to use.”
That’s not all. District 200 is also implementing Raptor StudentSafe, essentially a records management system for the district’s behavioral threat management team. Devitt said StudentSafe is being used on a limited basis until full training can be completed by the district’s behavioral threat assessment and management team in June.
According to Raptor’s website, StudentSafe “aids schools in managing student well-being.” For example, if a student shows any type of concerning behaviors where they might be a threat to themselves or someone else, StudentSafe immediately escalates that concern into an assessment or an investigation.
“We’ve been building out StudentSafe for our student forms for the last month or so,” Devitt said. “It’s being used for some case management. StudentSafe holds us accountable to make sure we’re following our own protocols and doing violence prevention.”
The bundled cost to the district for the two new Raptor technologies is $6,536, according to Tony Arbogast, district assistant superintendent for finance. The cost is not reduced through OPRF’s Tri-District Consortium Agreement with districts 90 and 97, the elementary schools in River Forest and Oak Park. District 97 confirmed it began using the Raptor Emergency Management System and Raptor VisitorSafe last fall. District 90 does not use Raptor products. It utilizes Visitor Aware by Singlewire Software for visitor management, and CrisisGo for emergency communications.
Eric Hackl, district director of technology, added that OPRF is also using web filtering and alerts from Austin, Texas-based Lightspeed Systems.
In that scenario, if a student posts a document with concerning content, such as a suggestion they would hurt themselves or others, it would get flagged, Hackl said, with an email delivered to the dean immediately for follow-up. If the content is deemed an imminent threat, Lightspeed would contact OPRF immediately.
“We’re not relying on one piece,” Hackl said. “There are several components.”
New board members get their sea legs
After a rather contentious April 1 election, the Oak Park and River Forest High School board of education welcomed new members Josh Gertz and Kathleen Odell to their ranks at its committee of the whole meeting May 8. That meeting included an hourlong closed session.
“It was fun,” Gertz said. “I enjoyed it. I mean, we had a good discussion. I didn’t feel lost. I felt like I knew what I was doing. I think we evaluated a lot of policies and asked great questions.”
Odell, an economics professor and associate provost at Dominican University, agreed.
“It was a great meeting,” Odell said. “I enjoyed it.”
Among the discussion topics was the Tri-District Consortium agreement with districts 90 and 97, which covers Zoom video conferencing licenses for the moment, but could add other components later in order to drive down overall costs for all. For example, Tony Arbogast, assistant superintendent of business services, said District 200 enjoys over 10% savings on Zoom due to the consortium.
Another topic that resulted in more robust discussion was a geothermal piping excavation project which is impacting the OPRF football field. The piping needs to cross several utilities in the mall area just west of the school, including the ComEd transmission line that carries 138,000 volts of power. In discussions with ComEd, it was found the district’s geothermal piping and the transmission line are at the same elevation or height in the ground.
The solution, Arbogast said, involves digging deeper in the ground to allow the geothermal piping to go under the transmission line with the required safety clearance of three feet between the utilities. The cost of the change to the overall project, to start June 2, is $117,648, which will be covered through the Project 2 contingency budget. The board will need to approve the project at its May 22 regular meeting.
“It doesn’t sit well with me that there is nobody accountable,” Gertz said.
Incumbent board member Fred Arkin, also voted in on April 1, was more pointed.
“I find this frustrating … $117,000 out of the contingency of Project 2?” he said. “I just don’t like the way this has been managed.”
Nevertheless, board vice president Tim Brandhorst thought Gertz and Odell did well in their maiden voyage.
“I think both Kathleen and Josh are really welcome additions, and already we can tell they are going to be strong and active and hardworking board members,” Brandhorst said.
