The recent shooting at Wootton High School has many families and educators taking a fresh look at what safety inside school buildings should include.
A Montgomery County-based company says a device already being tested in some schools could help staff quietly call for help when an emergency strikes.
Silent Beacon is based in Rockville, Maryland, and makes a wearable panic button designed to reduce the steps taken when reporting an emergency.
President Kenny Kelley said the idea is to let people focus on getting to safety while the technology works in the background.
“I think there’s a lot of lawmakers and a lot of people in powerful positions that say, run, hide, call 911. With our product, you can call 911 and do everything else in the background,” Kelley said.
The device can be worn like a watch and connects to a teacher’s phone through Bluetooth.
How it’s used can vary depending on the situation, especially in schools.
“Not every single time they press the button is an escalation to 911,” said Tyler Charuhas, Silent Beacon’s director of client engagement. “So let’s keep it within our organization so that we can properly assess is this an escalation, or is this something that we can just keep and handle internally?”
During a demonstration, Charuhas explained how quickly the device can be activated.
“You’re going to press and hold it for about three seconds,” Charuhas said.
Once triggered, the device can place phone calls, send text messages and share a live location. It can be set up to alert school security or emergency services, and it can be used with or without speaking.
“You can make it seem like you did disable it,” Charuhas said. “But the microphone is still active, so emergency services can hear everything that’s happening in the room.”
School administrators can also see alerts on a live map and send mass notifications if a situation escalates.
Kelley said the technology is currently being piloted at one college and one K-12 school in the D.C. area, while other schools across the country are also using the product.
Right now, Silent Beacon relies on pairing with a smartphone, but Kelley said the company is working on a version that would not require a phone connection.
For Kelley, who is also a parent, the technology is personal. He said tools like this are meant to save time and remove hesitation when every second matters.
“When you have that two-way audio, you can actually kind of dissect what the situation requires, and 911 can actively act on that,” Kelley said.
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