60% of school personnel haven't downloaded safety app
Warwick educators have access to a unique advantage over other districts in the state when it comes to shoring up school safety. The Mutual Link system connects police, fire and EMS services with the schools so that, through the use of a free smart phone app, every individual teacher and administrator within every school can immediately sound an alarm and give security camera access and real-time geolocation data to first responders in the event of an unthinkable tragedy, like a natural disaster or active shooting.
One must ask then, why, since the district started tracking the use of the app within the city in September, have only 40 percent of total school personnel actually downloaded the app?
According to a data sheet prepared for the Dec. 11 meeting of the Warwick School Committee, participation from school faculty downloading the “Rave Panic Button” app fluctuates greatly from school to school, with the top two facilities being the Warwick Early Learning Center at John Brown Francis (84 percent participation) and Cedar Hill Elementary (63 percent).
Scott Elementary School is at the lowest participation rate by far, with only 16 percent of school personnel having the app as of Dec. 7. This number is the same as when a count was taken the month prior on Nov. 7. At its lowest, only 9 percent of school personnel at Scott had downloaded the app as of Oct. 15, 2018.
“God forbid there is ever an event at our schools, 16 percent isn't going to help those kids,” said School Committee member David Testa during their Dec. 11 meeting. “That's my point. Responsibility of protecting students starts with adults, and ends with adults. I don't mean to scold, but I don't get this.”
The low numbers of participation might make more sense if the Mutual Link system and corresponding app were introduced recently, but Mutual Link launched in November of 2016, with a district-wide effort to emphasize the importance of participating in the system starting in March of 2017, according to the superintendent’s office. Individual school administrators and secretaries were trained even earlier than that.
According to Warwick Teachers’ Union president Darlene Netcoh, she believes many teachers are simply unaware of what the app does and how they can go about getting it.
“I think it got by people,” she said. “There are people who are not technologically savvy. Believe it or not we do have people with flip phones, or no phones.”
Superintendent Philip Thornton said that in addition to multiple emails that have gone out to staff regarding specific instructions on how to download the app and how to sign up for the system – including a YouTube video that provides a detailed demonstration – all staff and faculty have to do in order to get registered for the Rave app is download it from the app store (for free) and then reach out to Camely Machado, the manager of non-instructional student services, who will go through the signup and verification process for them.
“The only thing I don't do is physically put it on their phone,” Machado said.
A possible reason for low participation could be numerous rumors spread around that the app will eat up large percentages of battery, that it takes up large amounts of storage or can be remotely used to spy on teachers through the geolocation capabilities of the app.
All of these rumors have no basis in reality, according to both Thornton and police personnel, who in the past during training sessions with administrators have implored the importance of downloading the app to make the Mutual Link system function as intended. The app only uses battery when open, like any other mobile app, takes up only about 25 megabytes of storage (the Amazon app, by comparison, uses about 100) and the geo tracking only turns on when the app is in active use.
“There has been a lot of misinformation on this,” Thornton said.
Thornton said that every school in the district underwent training with the Warwick Police Department this fall on “Run, Hide, Fight” protocol, the national standard for response to an active threat within a building such as a school. He said officers implored faculty again to download the app during this training.
“[Getting the word out] has been done multiple times in different formats, whether it's electronic, personal, professional development,” said Thornton. “Having said that, we will keep providing support until we have more folks who are on the system. It's about the safety of everyone.”
“The only reason you should not have this app on your phone, is if you don't have a phone, in my humble opinion,” Testa said.
