The state Department of Emergency Management signed a $950,000 contract with a Massachusetts company to provide panic-button phone apps for employees of Arkansas' public schools, after the Legislature this year enacted a law that requires installation of the systems by Sept. 1.
"It's like a 911 in the schools" and is aimed at expediting response times from the appropriate emergency responders if there is a gunman, a fire or a medical emergency, said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jane English, R-North Little Rock, who was the Senate sponsor of what is now Act 950.
"Ted and Julie Mullenix put that together for us," she said, referring to the husband and wife partners in the Mullenix & Associates lobbying firm, which represents the company that's sold the licenses for the panic button apps to the state.
These panic button apps will connect the caller directly to 911 and simultaneously notify on-site staff members that the call had been made. The feature also would allow emergency personnel to access a floor plan of the school remotely and allow an alert to be sent to other wireless phones. Only authorized users will have access.
Rave Mobile Safety, the company behind the Rave Panic Button app, says help can be summoned quickly with just the push of a button.
The state is leaving a lot of the decision making to individual school districts.
"It will be a local decision as to which buildings and personnel will be given the app, so at this point, it is too early in the process to determine how many each school district will receive," said Kim Friedman, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. "We're still in the implementation phase. The plan is for districts to receive the app in September," she said.
Act 950, or the 2015 School Safety Act, requires the "panic button alert system" to be in place by Sept. 1, if funding is available.
The implementation of the systems is being funded by the state Department of Education, the department said in a recent memorandum. The department is using funds from the unobligated Public School Fund balance, said state budget administrator Duncan Baird. That balance totaled $58 million on June 30, he said.
The Emergency Management Department last month signed an amendment to its existing contract with Rave Mobile Safety to pay an $850,000 annual license fee for up to 40,000 registered panic button users and a $100,000 panic button setup and configuration fee in the fiscal year that started July 1, the department's records show.
"There could be other panic button systems out there, but we did not do [an] RFP [request for proposal] on this because the 2015 School Safety Act (Act 950 of 2015) says that the panic button system will integrate into the existing statewide Smart911 system," Emergency Management Department spokesman Krista Guthrie said in an email.
"Smart911 is a product of Rave. We have a 5-year contract with Rave for Smart911, so we were able to amend the contract to add these additional services," she said Friday.
The school safety measure sailed through the state House in a 91-to-0 vote and the state Senate, 34-0.
The measure's House sponsor, Rep. Scott Baltz, D-Pocahontas, did not respond to several requests for comment left on his phone this week.
The Emergency Management Department is in the third year of a five-year contract with Rave Mobile Safety for Smart911 and Smart Prepare as part of 911 Rural Enhancement for which it pays the company $825,000 a year in license fees, said Guthrie.
"Arkansas chose us because we already have Smart911. It saved Arkansas money because we can go on that," said Ted Mullenix, a former Republican state House member who represents the firm.
Miller said schools in states such as Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan and Washington already use the panic button app.
Smart911 connects cellphones to 911 operators, Guthrie said. Users create profiles at smart911.com for free and they are linked to one or more cellphones; one profile per family is recommended.
Whenever 911 is called from that phone, the family's data will pop up so the 911 dispatcher can see it, she said. The information stored on those profiles is information a dispatcher would ask for in the event of an emergency, so basically users are answering these questions ahead of time, when they are calm, instead of when they are dealing with an emergency and might panic, she said.
According to the Education Department, Act 950 also requires public schools to:
• Designate an administrator or designee or designees to create an online facility profile for each campus and the district central office. The facility profile will include annotated floor plans of each building, campus layouts and a campus contacts spreadsheet. The documents should be uploaded to Rave Mobile Safety by Sept. 1.
• Ensure district faculty and staff members are trained to use the panic button system. Rave Mobile Safety will conduct a training session Friday.
• Update annotated floor plans, campus layouts and campus spreadsheets each year.
Metro on 07/25/2015