TEXAS, USA — The head of school, safety and security for the Texas Education Agency, John Scott, called the launch of the Sentinel program a tool made by schools for schools.
Sentinel is a TEA system that helps districts identify, assess and mitigate risks to students and staff.
According to Scott, the TEA partnered with 30 superintendents from all over the state to figure out what would be the best practices to implement.
From those conversations came the Sentinel school safety system.
The system is also equipped with a mass communication feature that can transfer information out when emergencies happen, and that still doesn't begin to cover it.
"It does intruder detection audits, district vulnerability assessments, emergency management, technical assistance, training and behavior threat assessments and resources and supports," Scott said.
Right now, behavioral threat assessments are done differently all across the state. Scott added that the Texas School Safety Center does a fantastic job of doing some training, but there's no one way to do behavior threat assessments. Sentinel has the capability to streamline that.
This is a way to get more than 12,000 Texas school districts on one accord when it comes to the safety of children, teens and young adults.
It will also offer tools for other state requirements like door checks to cut down on TEA requests for that information.
All of these advancements are at no extra cost to Texas school districts.
For those wondering, this is not an entirely new project. Some features were available for schools last year, so this is really an expansion of the technology and it will be provided for free to school districts across Texas.
As a way to ensure districts feel confident using this resource, TEA wanted to stress that Sentinel has passed every cyber security test.