After reported issue, new badge-based alert system to be used in Duval County Public Schools

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Duval County Public Schools has announced a new badge-based, emergency alert system will be used in local schools.

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<

The system, called CrisisAlert, comes from a company named CENTEGIX. It operates based on a connection between sensors inside and outside of school buildings. A smart badge must be worn by school personnel. It’s meant to enhance safety through rapid response by pressing a button on that badge, but it didn’t work as planned for one school district in North Carolina.

[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]

On the DCPS website, it was announced that CrisisAlert would be installed in local schools by the start of the next school year.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district had the system installed but it never worked for them.

Action News Jax’s sister station, WSOC, covered the issues extensively.

Read: Voter groups urge federal judge to block Florida election laws, citing discrimination

“We did not get, and will not get what we were promised, and what we have paid for,” former Charlotte-Mecklenburg superintendent Ernest Winston said in 2020, after dissolving their relationship with CENTEGIX.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburgschool school district paid over $1 million for the system which could monitor an entire school, a system they found to be unreliable.

“This is cutting-edge technology, some glitches are to be expected, but the problems we’ve had are more than glitches, they indicate the system is not reliable,” Winston said.

Read: Florida school districts prepare for new law mandating bathroom use aligned with biological sex

After ongoing issues with the technology, the Charlotte-Micklenburg school district wound up filing a lawsuit to get back the $1 million it had paid to have the system installed.

[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]

CENTEGIX provided this response concerning the lawsuit and its CrisisAlert system:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina was an early customer that purchased CrisisAlert in 2019. During the pilot with CMS, we tested the solution with the district, identified points of remediation and addressed those, and successfully completed quality assurance testing. During the implementation, district leadership changed, and the new leadership chose not to continue with the implementation.

We have not had other legal issues with any other school districts. We have added — and continue to add — greater capabilities, features, and processes to both improve the solution and enhance the CrisisAlert functionality available to our customers. In fact, since Charlotte, we have implemented over 3,000 additional sites. We are proud of our 99%+ customer retention rate and the more than 2,000 testimonials from staff who have shared the positive experiences they’ve had with their CrisisAlert badge.

I’d also like to share that we recently released our latest School Safety Trends report. In this report, we share insights from the nearly 60,000 alerts CrisisAlert delivered in the Spring 2023 semester and the testimonials from staff who used the badge to call for help. The report is based on our experience with thousands of schools across the country, where we protect over 5 million people.

CENTEGIX CrisisAlert was the wearable badge solution approved by Florida DOE to fulfill Alyssa’s law requirements. More districts in Florida have adopted CENTEGIX, and we now protect more than 33% of all K-12 public schools in the state, including 3 of the Top 6 districts.

CENTEGIX is chosen for the wearable CrisisAlert badge that is easy and discrete to use and enables 100% user adoption. CrisisAlert can be used anywhere on a campus; operates on a private, managed network; is not dependent on wifi or cellular; delivers precise location information for incidents; and full audio-visual notifications for campus-wide threats.

—  CENTEGIX