Saline area schools in Michigan have many students with special needs, as well as students enrolled in adult education and life skills programs. The district recently updated district-wide safety alerts to ensure that important announcements regarding school closings or tornado warnings, which are common in the region, are communicated effectively to all students, regardless of their hearing and vision needs. .
“We needed to make sure we had something that could reach everyone in all circumstances,” says Jay Grossman, the district's chief technology officer. To do that it was necessary to address the diverse needs of students with effective technology and communication.
Here are some of the best practices for increasing safe accessibility that Grossman learned in the process.
Provide various visual and auditory options
Grossman used InformaCast to create an accessible alert system. The district also used speakers from Network Design, some of which come with a three-strobe warning system. The district also developed a color-coded emergency strobe light system.
“Blue means all clear, red means a lock. But if you're colorblind and can't discern that, then you're also trained that if the left light is on, it's a lock, and the right light is not,” Grossman says. .
Text messages will also appear on various screens, providing instructions to students, while auditory cues provide students who cannot see verbal cues emitted from emergency speakers.
These alerts also take into account unique situations that students may find themselves in while at school. For example, the district has some spaces that are potentially loud enough to drown out the sound of an alert, including welding rooms and several music rooms. All of these unique situations have been taken into account.
“In the welding rooms, what we've done is run ductwork above the welding stations and put the strobe lights right above their heads, so that when they're down there working with their helmets on and welding, at least out of their way. peripheral zone. you'll see a kind of flash that goes on to indicate, 'Oh, hey, something's going on,'” Grossman says.
<h2 id="test-tech-and-get-teacher-amp-student-feedback-xa0″>Test the technology and get feedback from teachers and students
Once you have an inclusive alert system in place, it's important to educate teachers and students about how it all works. Students should learn, for example, that the light on the left indicates a lock while the light on the right means all clear.
It's also important for district leaders to get feedback from the school community once the new alert systems are implemented, Grossman says.
For example, during the drill and feedback portion of the implementation process, Grossman and his team learned the appropriate alert volume for different spaces. Because the district uses speakers that have individual volume controls, they were able to ensure each area had the appropriate volume.
“So if a teacher said, 'You didn't hear it because the class was loud or you were in a hallway,' something like that, or 'You heard something soft or muffled,' we could increase it.” he says. “Or if he's in a quiet room that's always quiet, maybe we don't have it blasting at 10.”
