The Louisiana Center for Safe Schools told the K–12 School Safety Task Force that its grant program, mapping work and statewide safety technology are expanding but underfunded.

Director Jackie Manton said the center administers a $5,000,000 annual grants program for school safety projects and that demand far exceeded supply: the center received 583 applications this grant cycle and officials calculated about $28,000,000 worth of requests. “There is a need that the schools have,” Manton said. She told the task force the 2024 grant round left roughly $300,000 unspent and that the program has operated since the School Safety Act of 2023 established the center’s responsibilities.

Manton described three priority program areas the center manages: grants, a statewide panic‑button deployment and a mapping/dashboard effort to tie school emergency operations plans to response maps. The center’s program manager, John Davis, said the statewide panic button (Motorola’s Rave platform under contract) is active in roughly 1,200 schools; the platform lets staff trigger an alert from a phone that routes location and mapping data to local 9‑1‑1 and designated responders. “Teachers will have it on their… all staff at a school will have it on their phone,” Davis said, describing the intended deployment model.

Manton said the center renegotiated its Rave contract to reduce costs and expand active implementations; the current arrangement was described as a one‑year extension while the center prepares an open request for proposals to assess alternate vendors.

The center also discussed a mapping requirement enacted by the Legislature this year. Manton said the next steps are to inventory which schools already have compliant mapping, then run an RFP to fund vendors to map remaining campuses and host maps and emergency operations plans in a central dashboard maintained with the state’s disaster-management institute (SDMI). She said vendors that market school mapping have cited insurance reductions as an incentive for districts to map campuses.

Manton said the center supports the center’s regional coordinators in outreach, and that a recent statewide data call is under way to collect basic safety‑practice answers (panic button present, SRO present, threat‑assessment procedures, anonymous reporting, etc.). The center reported 200 responses to date and expects a fuller data set over the coming weeks.

Task force members asked for a concise, itemized report the panel can include in its recommendations: the number of mapped schools, the number of schools with fully implemented panic‑button integration, a breakdown of grant awards, and a list of vendors currently under contract. Manton agreed to provide follow‑up documentation and to coordinate with legislators and superintendents on outreach.

No formal action was taken at the meeting.