Hillsborough County schools describe layered safety plan, employee alert badges and stronger law-enforcement ties

John Newman, chief of security and emergency management for Hillsborough County Public Schools, told the district podcast that school safety rests on a multilayered model that combines people, physical hardening and technology to protect students and staff.

"Safety and security is everyone's responsibility," Newman said. He described a set of background measures — cameras, gates and access control — that work alongside personnel and an employee alert badge system called Syntegic, which he said routes an alert to 911 centers, campus administrators and law enforcement to provide fast, location-specific response.

The approach, Newman said, aims to avoid turning schools into correctional facilities while ensuring that "every second counts" when help is needed. He noted the district adopted the Syntegic technology before the statewide mandates tied to Alyssa's Law that followed the February 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. "We already had Syntegic," he said, adding that the system supports the district's roughly 220,000 students across about 233 school sites and some 23,000 employees.

Newman also emphasized the district's partnerships with local law enforcement and public-safety leaders across Hillsborough County. "We all know each other," he said, naming cooperative work with the sheriff and area police chiefs as critical to coordinated response.

Clinicians and law enforcement assigned to campus threat-management teams are another pillar, Newman said. Those teams assess baseline behavior, investigate reported threats and try to distinguish offhand or joking remarks from credible risks. "There's a big push right now with the state...on our threat management teams," he said.

Students, he said, contribute to safety planning through student advisory councils. "Those kids, they're leaders," Newman said. "They tell you stuff...we're gonna make some modifications or some tweaks because that's the way they view it."

On the family front, Newman urged parents to comply with visitor-management protocols — buzzing in, signing in and using swipe cards — and to talk with children about what they post online. He warned that online messages can escalate into real-world investigations: "Kids are getting on these applications, and they're saying and doing things that are getting them sometimes in trouble," he said.

Newman referenced the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018 and said state laws enacted afterward have changed how authorities treat threat reports. He also raised AI as an emerging challenge: "AI said that," he warned, explaining automated tools could complicate determining who actually made a statement.

Newman described a cultural shift among principals since Sandy Hook and Parkland: early responses focused broadly on fences and cameras, he said, while current requests are more detailed and reason-based. The district is also expanding joint training with fire and police and bringing educators into exercises so staff better understand response expectations.

The podcast closed with host Deborah Villanti thanking Newman and reiterating that safety requires coordinated systems, strong partnerships and community engagement. No formal actions were taken; the episode presented the district's current practices and guidance for families.