When leaders at Brecksville-Broadview Heights City Schools evaluated the public-address systems in their buildings, they faced a familiar capital-planning question: Should the district continue investing in aging equipment, or could those resources address its current safety needs more effectively?
Superintendent Jeffrey D. Harrison described that decision in Episode 8 of The Safety Signal, “Jeffrey Harrison, Ohio Superintendent, on Why Safety Can’t Wait”. The district’s newest building was approximately 25 years old at the time, and its PA systems had become a source of concern.
“The PA, you never know if it is working or is failing until you need it,” Harrison told CENTEGIX CMO Robb Monkman. In an emergency, the district could discover that a speaker was damaged, the volume was too low, or static made an announcement difficult to understand.
The district’s answer offers a useful example for other leaders evaluating school safety solutions: Start with the safety outcome the district needs, assess whether its existing infrastructure can deliver it reliably, and compare the full value of repairing an old system with investing in a more comprehensive approach.
Why Do Aging Systems Create a School Safety Decision?
Schools depend on building systems that have finite useful lives. A September 2026 Government Accountability Office review of K-12 facilities found that nearly half of districts experienced chronic facility issues in at least one school during the 2024–25 school year. Fifty-five percent considered their most recent facilities budget insufficient, and many deferred maintenance projects that could cost more over time.
Communication technology presents its own version of that challenge. An aging system may appear functional during routine operations but reveal a failure when the district needs it most. Emergency communication also involves more than producing an audible announcement. Districts need to consider who can initiate an alert, how quickly notifications reach the right people, whether the message is understandable in different environments, and whether responders receive useful location information.
The Justice Department’s critical incident review of the Robb Elementary School response identified failures involving communication, coordination, leadership, and incident command. Those findings reinforce the need to evaluate communication as part of the complete response process, rather than judge a system solely by whether it can produce sound.
Harrison’s district faced a choice. “We had to either fix our PA system or find some other way to keep our buildings safe,” he said. “So, we chose to invest in CENTEGIX rather than investing money in an outdated public-address system.”
That was Brecksville-Broadview Heights’ specific decision. A CENTEGIX CrisisAlert wearable panic button and its connected notification capabilities do not universally replace every operational function of every PA system. The larger lesson is that a planned repair or replacement creates an opportunity to reassess what the district now requires from its school safety technology.
How Should Districts Compare Repairing and Replacing Safety Infrastructure?
Harrison approaches the decision through cost-benefit analysis, a habit he traces to his years teaching economics.
“Everything has a cost,” he said. “But what’s the benefit to that cost?”
A useful comparison should include more than the initial purchase price. District leaders can ask:
- Will the investment address the vulnerabilities identified in the school safety plan?
- Can employees initiate an alert from classrooms, hallways, playgrounds, parking areas, and other district-defined spaces?
- Does the system communicate the type and precise location of an incident?
- Can audible, visual, and digital notifications reach people in different environments?
- What new wiring, network capacity, hardware, installation labor, training, testing, and maintenance will be required?
- Can the district monitor system health before an emergency exposes a failure?
- Will staff understand and use the solution consistently?
The CISA K-12 School Security Guide encourages schools to base security improvements on a site-specific assessment and a layered strategy. The federal school emergency operations planning guide similarly emphasizes that technology should support procedures developed around a school’s individual risks and capabilities.
These questions also expose expenses that may be missing from an initial quote. Evaluating the hidden infrastructure and implementation costs of an emergency notification system can prevent districts from underestimating wiring, network drops, installation labor, additional hardware, and ongoing maintenance.
How Can Facilities Planning Support a School Safety Plan?
GAO identifies facility condition assessments and multiyear capital plans as tools districts can use to compare deficiencies and prioritize future investments. That same discipline can be applied to safety communication systems.
Districts can inventory the systems already installed across each campus, document their condition and dependencies, and compare those capabilities with the school safety plan. A review might reveal aging speakers, uneven audio coverage, reliance on Wi-Fi or cellular service, systems that do not share information, or response procedures that require employees to relay an incident through several people.
This is where facilities, IT, safety, finance, and district leadership need a shared evaluation process. Safety technology can introduce additional infrastructure risk if a district does not understand how it connects, what it requires from the network, and who will maintain it. Examining how an emergency management system affects IT infrastructure helps districts evaluate reliability and implementation burden before making a commitment.
Emergency notifications must also reach people in different conditions. FEMA’s public-alert guidance supports using multiple communication pathways because no single channel will reach every person in every circumstance. In schools, a crowded cafeteria may make an intercom hard to hear, an employee outside may be away from a computer, and a person with hearing loss may need a visual notification.
The CENTEGIX Safety Platform combines wearable alert activation, room- and floor-level location information, onsite notifications, and campus-wide audio and visual notifications. Its Safety Blueprint critical incident mapping can give responders a shared view of the incident location, entrances, exits, and nearby safety assets. Those functions should be evaluated as parts of a district’s complete response strategy, not as isolated hardware features.
How Can Districts Find Resources for School Safety Solutions?
Harrison acknowledges that comprehensive safety solutions require a real investment. His argument is that district budgets already reflect choices about which needs take priority.
“When you look at the grand scale of a school district and, for example, what we spend on Kleenex or paper towels in a given school district, how could we not find the resources available to have a system this comprehensive and this simple?” he asked.
That does not mean every district has unrestricted funds. It means leaders should look across planned repairs, capital replacements, technology budgets, safety allocations, grants, and multiyear purchasing plans before concluding that a solution is unaffordable. Ohio’s FY26 School Safety Grant program, which provided funding for safety initiatives during the 2026-27 academic year, explicitly included silent panic alarms and other equipment used to implement a school safety plan among eligible uses.
Districts should also calculate value beyond a worst-case scenario. Harrison said staff alerts are used regularly for everyday incidents in his district. Frequent use, staff confidence, response time, precise location, system reliability, and predictable costs all belong in the ROI calculation for a school alert system.
What Proves a School Safety Investment Is Working?
Harrison has implemented CENTEGIX in two different school districts. In both, employee adoption demonstrated that the solution met a practical need.
“The adoption and the belief in the system from the staff is what sold it to me, what proved to me that this was an investment worth making,” he said.
Adoption matters because deployed hardware is not the same as operational readiness. Staff members must carry the device, understand the alert types, trust the response process, and feel confident acting under pressure. A managed implementation that aligns technology with district protocols can reduce friction and help employees use the system consistently. That is why implementation and hands-on training belong in the district’s cost and value analysis.
Harrison summarizes the budgeting lesson clearly: “When we budget our money and we spend our money, we just need to be very aware of what our true needs are. And they need to start at the most basic level, and safety is one of them.”
For Brecksville-Broadview Heights, an aging PA system prompted a broader question about what the district needed from its safety infrastructure. Other districts do not need to reach the same purchasing decision. They do need to ask whether repairing a legacy system will close the response gaps they have identified, or simply preserve the limitations they already have.
Hear Harrison’s full discussion of infrastructure, cost-benefit analysis, everyday use, and staff adoption in Episode 8 of The Safety Signal, “Jeffrey Harrison, Ohio Superintendent, on Why Safety Can’t Wait.”
Frequently Asked Questions About School Safety Solutions and Aging Infrastructure
How should a district evaluate an aging emergency communication system?
The district should assess reliability, coverage, accessibility, notification methods, location accuracy, system dependencies, monitoring, maintenance, and alignment with its emergency procedures. The review should include facilities, IT, safety personnel, administrators, finance leaders, employees, and first-responder partners.
Can a wearable panic button replace a school PA system?
That depends on the district’s requirements and the capabilities of the complete system. A wearable panic button initiates an alert, while a broader emergency notification system may use intercom integrations, strobes, computer notifications, mapping, and messages to responders. Districts should document every function they need before deciding whether to repair, supplement, integrate, or replace existing infrastructure.
What costs should districts consider when comparing school safety solutions?
Districts should consider hardware, software, wiring, network upgrades, installation, training, maintenance, monitoring, integrations, replacement cycles, internal labor, and future pricing. They should also evaluate operational factors such as coverage, adoption, reliability, and the time required to initiate and respond to an alert.
Can school safety technology be funded through capital or infrastructure planning?
Potentially. Funding rules vary by district and source, but a scheduled infrastructure replacement may provide an opportunity to compare repair costs with a broader safety investment. Districts should consult their finance and legal teams and review available state and federal grant requirements.