When a student at Forest Hills Public Schools in Michigan experienced a violent seizure, a member of the school's medical emergency response team reached the student in less than 60 seconds. Additional help, including the school resource officer, was mobilized as part of the response. For Superintendent Ben Kirby, the incident demonstrated what happens when employees have a reliable way to request help and responders know exactly where they're needed.
But that capability didn't happen by accident. It was the result of district leadership identifying gaps, evaluating school safety solutions, involving employees, and preparing teams to act.
In Episode 12 of The Safety Signal, CENTEGIX CMO Robb Monkman sits down with Kirby and Nick Russo, Superintendent of Rochester Community Schools, to discuss how their districts transformed safety priorities into systems staff can trust. Their experiences offer an important lesson for school leaders: an effective school safety plan connects preparation, communication, technology, and trained personnel so employees can initiate a coordinated response when someone needs help.
A comprehensive school safety plan must address both extraordinary threats and the everyday emergencies that occur across school campuses. As the U.S. Department of Education's Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center emphasizes, emergency preparedness requires coordinated planning, training, exercises, and ongoing improvement. For Kirby and Russo, making those connections began with examining what their districts could do—and what was missing.
Why Does School Safety Require More Than a Plan on Paper?
Both superintendents' approaches to school safety were shaped by experiences that made the responsibility deeply personal.
Russo recalls serving as an elementary school principal when the Sandy Hook tragedy occurred. "It's one of those days that you don't forget," he reflected. Years later, upon becoming superintendent of Rochester Community Schools, one of his earliest decisions was to reorganize district leadership to establish dedicated oversight of safety and security. Within his first two weeks, Russo reorganized his cabinet team and subsequently brought in a former police chief to help lead the district's safety efforts.
Rochester serves approximately 15,000 students across 22 facilities, according to Russo. For a district of that size, he believed safety needed clear ownership and consistent attention.
Kirby's experience was similarly shaped by the 2021 Oxford High School shooting. At the time, he was superintendent of neighboring Lake Orion Community Schools, where families and employees had close connections to the Oxford community. The tragedy reinforced a challenge school leaders often face: protecting students and staff physically while also helping them feel secure in their learning and working environments.
When Kirby later joined Forest Hills Public Schools, he began with a listening tour, speaking with administrators, staff, and community members to understand the district's priorities. He discovered opportunities to strengthen safety terminology, planning, preparation, and emergency response. Rather than approaching those issues independently, Kirby worked alongside the district's safety director and established a representative safety committee.
His experience reflects the collaborative approach promoted by the U.S. Department of Education's school emergency planning resources, which emphasize developing emergency operations plans with relevant community partners. The lesson is that a school safety plan cannot remain a document reviewed only during scheduled meetings. Its procedures must translate into actions employees understand and can perform.
What Emergency Response Gaps Did These Superintendents Identify?
At Rochester, existing security measures included secure vestibules and established building-entry procedures. But Russo identified a different concern: how employees communicated when someone needed immediate assistance.
For years, walkie-talkies had been a primary communication method across districts where he worked. That created challenges during incidents involving student behavior, illness, or other sensitive circumstances. Broadcasting details over a shared radio channel could expose information to employees who weren't involved in the response, and Russo wanted a way "to communicate to the right people that something's happening" without compromising the dignity or confidentiality of those involved.
He also raised an accessibility concern. Having previously worked with programs serving students who were deaf or hard of hearing, Russo understood that emergency notifications needed to reach people with different communication needs. The Americans with Disabilities Act's effective communication guidance reinforces the importance of making communication accessible to people with disabilities.
At Forest Hills, Kirby identified another fundamental gap. Not every employee had access to a phone or district-issued radio when an emergency occurred.
"We needed to have a way that every one of our employees could call for help," Kirby explained.
That included situations where the employee needed assistance personally, a student was experiencing an emergency, or an incident involved multiple students. These experiences highlight a question school leaders should ask when evaluating how school safety devices communicate: Can employees initiate an alert immediately, from wherever they're working, without first locating another device?
The issue is not simply whether a district has an emergency alert system. It's whether the people who need to use it can do so without unnecessary obstacles.
How Did the Districts Evaluate School Safety Solutions?
Both superintendents emphasized the importance of evaluating technology in the context of district needs. Russo describes conducting a needs assessment that considered facilities, existing infrastructure, and employee feedback. The district weighed potential investments in physical security against opportunities to strengthen emergency response.
Kirby took a collaborative approach at Forest Hills. His district's safety committee included representatives from different school levels and departments. After narrowing its evaluation to two potential providers, the committee reviewed the options and provided feedback. The district also conducted reference checks, but one experience proved especially valuable: Forest Hills' safety director visited Rochester to see how its safety technology worked in an actual school environment.
For Kirby, the deciding factor was finding a solution that was "tried and true" and "proven." The district wasn't interested in becoming "somebody's experiment or pilot." That concern made firsthand evidence from another school district especially valuable.
At Rochester, the opportunity to experience the technology firsthand had also shaped the evaluation process. Russo explained, "You might not know what you don't know at the time. You don't know that there might be a gap." Seeing the solution in action helped district leaders recognize capabilities they hadn't initially considered.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's K–12 School Security Guide encourages schools to assess security risks and evaluate protective measures within a broader security strategy. Districts should also examine how prospective solutions fit their existing emergency procedures and infrastructure.
For example, critical incident mapping can help responders understand where an incident is occurring and locate important safety assets. Similarly, a comprehensive emergency management platform should support the full response process rather than simply initiate an alert. The goal is to identify solutions that address demonstrated operational gaps.
Why Are Staff Training and Trust Essential to Implementation?
Selecting technology was only part of the process. Both superintendents understood that employees needed to trust the system before they could confidently use it.
At Rochester, some employees immediately raised questions about location tracking. Russo explains that district leaders addressed those concerns directly, explaining how the wearable badges work