American Time Blog

Campus Safety's reports and surveys make clear the importance of having multiple communication systems and regularly using those systems so staff and students are familiar with how they work. Different systems fill in the inevitable gaps of any single technology, ensuring redundancy and clearer communications during a crisis, and facilitate alerts being sent to different audiences in an emergency, such as students, law enforcement, parents, neighbors, etc.

Like fire drills and tornado drills, lockdown and intruder drills have become commonplace in our schools.

Because these drills and the emergency plans they're designed to test and reinforce are responsible for keeping students safe, it's important to be sure that your protocols are efficient and effective.

With American Time's EverAlert system, you can be confident that you're providing your students and staff with the tools and information they need to be safe.  

How?  We're glad you asked...

"Crisis isn't a choice. Response is." - The "I Love U Guys" Foundation homepage

On September 27, 2006, at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, 16-year-old Emily Keyes lost her life to a gunman who had entered the school and taken seven students hostage.  At some point during the crisis, Emily managed to send a brief text message to her mother, Ellen, reading “I love u guys. K" and one to her father, John-Michael, which said "I love you guys."

It’s hard to imagine how any parent can deal with the loss of a child, much less find motivation in such a senseless tragedy.  But the Keyes family has done just that, establishing The "I Love U Guys" Foundation in 2006 with the mission “to restore and protect the joy of youth through educational programs and positive actions in collaboration with families, schools, communities, organizations and government entities.”  According to the Foundation, their programs are used in more than 40,000 schools and other organizations and communities around the world.

That's why American Time is proud to partner with The "I Love U Guys" Foundation in furthering their mission to ensure schools are well-equipped to manage crisis situations if they arise.

Like many districts, the Ackley-Geneva-Wellsburg-Steamboat Rock (AGWSR) School District in central Iowa faces some of the common issues arising from buildings starting to show their age.  For example:

From the time they wake up to the time they fall asleep, children and adults alike are bombarded with information coming from dozens of different sources competing for their attention.

You may have heard TV chef Alton Brown criticize "unitaskers" -- tools in the kitchen that take up space but only perform one specific task -- in favor of "multitaskers" which can suit a variety of purposes just as well as a dedicated tool. 

The Palmdale Aerospace Academy (TPAA) lives and breathes technology.

Founded in 2012, the school serves California's Antelope Valley community -- an area 40 miles north of Los Angeles nicknamed "Aerospace Valley" due to the aerospace industry's long-standing presence. TPAA is a STEM-focused K-12 school with the express intention of supporting the highly technical needs of its neighboring industries.

Ten years later, the school educates over 2500 students. As enrollment grew, so did the challenges. Steel-framed buildings made it difficult for their classroom atomic clocks to synchronize. They had an emergency alert system, but it wasn't integrated with any other systems. Despite being spread across two buildings with a number of outdoor campus facilities, there was no bell system. More students meant more systems to manage.

American Time's EverAlert system changed all that and, in the process, changed their culture.

Accurate, synchronized clocks in your building, school or facility are more than a convenience. When clocks display the wrong time or different times from each other, major disruptions and even risks can happen, such as….

• Meetings, classes or shifts start and end at different times, causing confusion and inefficiency
• Wages or compensation are disputed
• Critical tasks like surgeries, food prep or manufacturing processes aren’t tracked or reported accurately
• Maintenance staff spend too much time on clock repairs and adjustments

When you’re searching for new technology to help students learn better or for a school to run more efficiently, there are countless options. Which technology will live up to its promises? How does a school evaluate differences?

A student is called to the office but the PA system disrupts the entire school to make the announcement. A student has a medical emergency in a hallway but there’s no way to communicate with nearby classrooms. Instructions for fire, lockdown and tornado drills aren’t clear or specific to each area of a building.

No single emergency notification system can cover every scenario and communicate in every way possible, as explained in a recent survey and report by Campus Safety: “… several mass notification systems should be deployed so that the weaknesses of one solution can be compensated for by other so­lutions.” In fact, most K-12 and higher ed survey respondents use multiple systems to ensure that emergency communication is clear, redundant and reliable.