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By Rebecca Renshaw
Director of Marketing for CrisisGo
By now, you probably have spent significant time
working on your district’s emergency response plan.
You and your first response team have met with your
local police and fire departments and many of you
have sat down with your area emergency
management agencies to carefully craft a plan that,
hopefully, when an emergency happens, will keep
everyone at the district safe. Maybe you have even
already had a few drills with your response team
members based on your updated plan. If so, you
should be commended for doing all you can to keep
your teachers, staff, and students safe.
Yet, after all of your hard work and effort, why
would you want to put your emergency response plan
into a three-ring binder and place it on a shelf
somewhere? For information that critical, you can’t
afford to tuck it away somewhere to do nothing but
gather dust.
Research shows that 75 percent of workers carry
their phones to work and have them within three feet
of them at all times – and that number is growing.
So, why not turn those phones and other mobile
devices into a personal security platform that
provides crisis alerts, as well as the tools to respond
appropriately in those first critical moments of a
potentially dangerous situation?
When you install CrisisGo’s emergency response
app on your designated employees’ smart phones,
ipads, or desktops, they can instantly have access to
the same information that currently sits in that three-
ring binder. With the touch of a finger, administrators
can transmit either an audible alert or text notification
to specific individuals or everyone in the district. With
maps stored right on their mobile devices, all staff,
including substitute teachers, can know how to exit
buildings safely. They can use other maps to see
where fire extinguishers and defibrillators are located.
Teachers can have their student rosters on their
phones and can take roll after a crisis for reunification
purposes. When an incident occurs, everyone can
instantly access checklists of what to do in that
specific emergency. For those faced with
communicating with the public or media, loaded
communication scripts can be accessed for each type
of incident for helpful reference. CrisisGo is designed
specifically for the K-12 industry, and through our
partnership with IASA we have an in-depth
understanding of your environment and the myriad of
challenges you face as a school administrator. If you
would like to learn more about how we can help you
transform your emergency response plan and put it
into the hands of those who need that information
most, please contact us at 618-997-2114 or email us
at
School safety seminars set for Carbondale and Barrington
IASA and CrisisGo are partnering to put on one-hour school safety seminars on
Thursday, November 14 at 9 a.m. in the Media Center at the Carbondale Community High
School and Tuesday, November 19 at 2 p.m. in the Guidance Resource Center at
Barrington High School. The seminars will include a demonstration of a new emergency
response app for school administrators, faculty and staff members and is open to school
administrators, legislators and the media.
The program will include remarks by IASA Executive Director Brent Clark, a
presentation of how the app is relevant to school districts by Jeff Arnett, chief
communications officer for the Barrington 220 School District and an overview of the app by CrisisGo
President/CEO Jim Spicuzza.
“The safety of students, faculty and staff trumps everything else and when I saw the CrisisGo plan for the
first time I knew from my years as a school administrator that this app was a really good idea whose time has
come,” said Clark, whose career included being a teacher and principal as well as being a superintendent in
three different school districts before becoming the head of IASA, the state’s largest association for school
administrators, in 2006.
“The challenge of old-model crisis planning has always been making the bulky three-ring binder approach
more useful for administrators, teachers and staff. The CrisisGo app simplifies crisis communication by
creating faster ‘finger-tip’ access to resources and information in an emergency,” said Arnett, who has been
advising the app designers. The Barrington all-hazards emergency plan has served as a pilot project during
the developmental phase. The seminars are free of charge. Anyone wishing to register for one of the seminars
may do so by contacting Mary Ellen Buch at
or by calling her at 217-753-2213.
New school crisis response app can help bring safety plans to
life
