Efficiently and Effectively Implement a Safety Platform in 7 Days

Challenges Faced

Avon Grove Charter School relied on old school methods like emergency plan binders and walkie talkies to handle their safety communication. As enrollment grew for the school, they realized that they needed to update their approach to school safety.

Since Avon Grove Charter School didn't even have a walkie talkie for each staff member, they wanted to make sure their new safety platform would allow them to keep everyone connected for efficient and accurate communication and information sharing, no matter what device they were using.

Implementing the Platform

Bryan Brutto, Chief Academic Officer for Avon Grove Charter School informed that his district did a quick yet thorough rollout of CrisisGo in under a week to make sure the school staff weren't left without the safety resources they needed.

"I found, personally, the CrisisGo admin console and platform to be very user intuitive," stated Brutto. He added, "The process of being able to set this up was very linear, in my point of view, and I was appreciative of that. Sometimes, you get into these types of systems, and they can be very cumbersome to set up, but I found the CrisisGo admin console to be very user-friendly. I was able to move through the steps rather quickly."

According to Brutto, the implementation process allowed them to also evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their emergency protocols as they were setting up CrisisGo. He stated, "We took it as an opportunity that we're setting up this system, let's set it up the right way and be reflective at the same time, rather than to do it as a checklist item because then we're all going to have to go back and change things anyways. So we really looked at it as an opportunity to both review best practices and review what we were doing at the same time as we're feeding that information into the CrisisGo platform."

Brutto attributed the success of their quick implementation in part to being open and supportive of staff members as they trained them on the platform. He said they worked through numerous examples of how to use CrisisGo and made sure all staff questions were answered in each training session to show that CrisisGo is a tool to make safety easier and more effective.

Plans for the Future

Avon Grove Charter School will conduct a full-scale safety drill with CrisisGo at the beginning of the new year and include local law enforcement and emergency management agencies. Brutto also indicated that they are also working diligently with their local school districts, township, intermediate unit (IU), fire, police, and emergency management personal to get under a consistent platform for school safety.