District outlines safety upgrades: visitor management, panic buttons and backup communications

The Skyler Community Schools safety committee summarized recent and planned upgrades to district safety systems, including visitor screening, access controls, and emergency communications.

The district has rolled out Navigate 360 visitor management and reported the software flagged a check‑in that matched a name on an outside registry; the committee described a protocol under which flagged visitors are escorted to the district office for review by administration so staff can assess record details and determine appropriate restrictions. Staff also noted issues with substitutes being tied to a single home building in the system and said the vendor is developing a substitute pool function (estimated as a long‑range fix).

Administrators described completed deployment of building fobs across sites, the planned installation of panic buttons in strategic locations, and testing of wearable devices and an emergency call feature that would notify first responders with specific location details. The committee also discussed an internet outage that affected the phone and intercom system, and said district staff are exploring radio backups for critical communications in outages.

Committee members said drills and documentation will be logged through Navigate 360, and that staff are refining visitor‑screening processes to avoid false positives while keeping students safe. The district intends to continue testing and to bring vendors back to provide updates as new features (like a substitute pool) become available.

The committee recommended continued attention to hardware costs (RFID label costs for visitor badges were cited) and logistics for substitute management.