Hardin County Schools detail rollout of Raptor safety suite; district training planned in January

Hardin County Schools officials gave the board a detailed update Wednesday on the Raptor Technologies safety management suite the district purchased in May 2025, saying the system’s beacons, panic devices and visitor-screening tools are installed and staff training is underway.

Lieutenant Mark Gillingham, the school resource officer at North Park, said the district has deployed ceiling “beacons” that support indoor alerts and that staff can use an app, a desktop interface or a panic device to call for help. “The Raptor app is really nice,” Gillingham said, explaining that it offers team-assist options, a panic alert and real-time location data. He described five critical alert types the district will use: soft lockdown, hard lockdown, evacuation, shelter-in-place and a new ‘hold’ command for medical or other incidents that require keeping students in classrooms.

Officer Larry Robinson, the SRO identified as serving Central Park High School, said the system can reduce radio and phone traffic during incidents by pinpointing a user’s approximate location and showing responders where help is needed. “It tells you exactly where and who did it,” Robinson said of the app and badge notifications.

District staff also outlined visitor screening and reunification functions. Presenters said front-office staff now scan driver’s licenses into Raptor’s visitor-management database, which checks names against an offender registry and can flag people who are not allowed on school property. The district emphasized customization: officials can add or ban specific individuals and, if necessary, give prior written permission for a barred adult to attend a particular event after vetting by the superintendent’s office.

On reunification, staff said the district has memoranda of understanding for three off-site locations and will train administrators and other staff in January. “Raptor is coming in from Texas to train us. It’s an eight-hour training,” a district presenter said, noting that the training will include a mock reunification exercise using volunteer students and parents and that the board is invited to observe.

Officials addressed privacy and false-positive concerns. Presenters said Raptor does not collect Social Security numbers or photos from scanned licenses and that the system syncs overnight with the district’s enrollment platform. They acknowledged some early kinks — for example, students who treated panic badges like fidget devices — and said the technology team is working with the vendor to customize settings.

Board members asked about how the system handles adults who are barred from district property but whose children need support; presenters said the superintendent’s office issues case‑by‑case permissions and can provide letters granting access to specific events.

The board did not take any formal vote on Raptor during the meeting; presenters noted the purchase had been approved earlier in May 2025 and that the district is in implementation and training phases.

The district plans to expand training to building-level staff after the January district-level exercises and to continue refining system settings with the vendor.