The nation’s largest school district plans to pilot an emergency system gaining popularity in American schools that directly alerts police in the event of a shooting or other emergency, without anyone having to pick up the phone to call 911.
The initiative, announced by New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Oct. 27, equips 51 of the district’s more than 1,800 schools with buttons that, if pressed, immediately notify police that there is a threat and dispatch officers to the scene. Staff members at those schools will also wear wireless buttons on their lanyards that they can press to activate the alert system, Adams said.
“We cannot stop some of this senseless violence. We’re going to try like hell to do so, but we’re not always successful,” Adams said at a press conference. “And so we need the right methodologies to ensure that you are safe if a shooting takes place.”
Emergency alert systems are not new to K-12 public schools—the quick activation of a system at Apalachee High School in Georgia last year likely saved lives, law enforcement officials said at the time. School districts have increasingly turned to them in recent years as school shootings, while statistically rare, show no signs of abating.
There have been 13 school shootings so far this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an Education Week analysis. There have been 234 such shootings since 2018. There were 39 school shootings with injuries or deaths last year.
But the panic buttons commonly come into play for emergencies other than shootings.
Last year, Brent Cobb, CEO of the company Centegix, which develops a similar and commonly used emergency alert system for schools, told Education Week that more than 95% of the alarm activations each year are for day-to-day problems, like a behavioral challenge in a classroom or a medical emergency.
Adams did not say during his press conference whether the New York City schools’ system would allow for such lower-level activations.
Emergency alert systems gaining traction in schools
The city’s schools’ emergency alert system was developed through a partnership with the Florida company SOS Technologies, Ray Legendre, a spokesperson for the New York City Office of Technology, said in an email to Education Week.
When the buttons—whether affixed to a surface in participating schools or worn around staff members’ necks, usually along with their ID badges—are activated, they route the information, including the exact location of the alarm’s origin, directly to first responders and dispatch emergency personnel, Adams said during his press conference.
The buttons also trigger a building-wide audio and visual alarm to notify students and staff in the building that there is a threat and that the school has entered a lockdown, Adams said.
Legendre said the buttons will be located in administrative spaces that aren’t accessible to students. In addition, administrators will generally be the staff members equipped with the wearable buttons—unlike with other emergency alert systems with which all school staff members wear buttons.
The pilot will first be rolled out at Spring Creek Community School in Brooklyn, and the rest of the schools in the program later this school year.
The technology can save valuable time in an emergency, Matt Fraser, chief technology officer for the city, said at the press conference with Adams.
“In the event that something happens in a school, minutes matter, seconds matter, and making sure that those that are in the school are aware of what’s happening and getting them to the safest place possible matters,” he said.
Alert buttons are a requirement in some states
It’s not clear just how common emergency alert systems are, but they have spread quickly.
Centegix first released its panic button in 2019, and company leaders said in an interview last year that the system has been installed in more than 12,000 public and private schools nationwide. (That works out to about 9% of the 129,000 public and private schools in the United States.)
Other schools work with different companies that offer similar technology or mobile app-based systems that do not require employees to wear physical buttons.
Three states—Texas, New Jersey, and Florida—have passed legislation requiring public schools to be equipped with panic alarm systems. Two other states—New York and Tennessee—require schools to consider such systems in their school safety plans. Lawmakers in a number of other states are considering panic button requirements for schools.
In Georgia, where the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School happened, 80 percent of public schools are equipped with the Centegix alert system, according to a company report released in May 2024. Centegix is headquartered in Atlanta, about 50 miles west of Apalachee High School.
Some security experts have cautioned districts against overlooking smaller, day-to-day safety fixes when adopting emergency alert systems, such as making sure schools’ exterior doors are locked and training staff. In essence, they recommend that schools be proactive with their safety measures, rather than primarily relying on a system that is reactive to threats and danger.
New York City officials have said the emergency alert system builds on other preventive safety measures in schools, including the Safer Access Program that locks main entrances to school buildings and the placement of school safety agents overseen by New York City police in schools, according to Chalkbeat.
The number of school safety agents, however, dropped significantly between 2019, when there were more than 5,000, and 2024, when there were about 3,600, Chalkbeat reported.