by When a motion detector went off overnight at Kromrey Middle School, police dispatchers called up a digital map of the building, located the detector, clicked on a live feed from the nearest camera and relayed the intruder’s location to police who ‘ replied.
Within moments, they caught the culprit: a teenager, dressed in dark clothes and a ski mask but carrying no weapon.
“The map and the cameras allow the dispatcher to keep things from getting too big,” said school security director Jim Blodgett. “The dispatcher could see what appeared to be a student… something that was just passing by in the building.”
Because of mass shootings, thousands of school districts have hired companies to produce detailed digital maps that can help police, firefighters and medical professionals respond more quickly in emergencies.
The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, where the teenage trespasser entered through a roof hatch, was an early adopter in Wisconsin, which has since provided mapping grants to about 200 districts.
More than 20 states have enacted or proposed digital school mapping measures in recent years, according to an Associated Press analysis aided by bill-tracking software Plural. Florida approved $14 million in grants last year. Michigan allocated $12.5 million. New Jersey allocated $12.3 million in federal pandemic relief funds to complete digital maps of all schools in the state.
Critical Response Group, run by an Army special operations veteran, was driving the trend. The New Jersey company’s CEO, Mike Rodgers, recently told lawmakers in Maryland about how he used digital grid maps during a deployment and was surprised that there was nothing like the school where his wife taught. So he mapped his school, then expanded it — to 12,000 schools and counting, across the country.
“When there’s an emergency at a school or a place of worship, it’s probably the first time those responders have ever been there,” Rodgers told the AP. “They’re under a lot of stress and they’re working with people they don’t know, which is the same problem that the military has overseas, and ultimately that’s why this technique was born.”
Lobbying and Competition
Many of the state laws and bills that Rodgers’ company opposes contain nearly the same wording. They require walk-in verification on each campus and are free with any software already in use by local schools and public safety agencies. They must be overlaid with aerial imagery and grid coordinates, “oriented to true north” and contain “location specific labelling” for rooms, doors, hallways, stairs, utility locations, hazards, key boxes, trauma kits and defibrillators automated external.
The standards create a “competitive, level playing field” for all vendors, Rodgers said. But when New Jersey asked for a mapping contractor, the Critical Response Group had “the only product available in the state that met the legislative criteria,” said State Police mapping coordinator Lt. Brendan Liston.
New Jersey law requires “critical incident mapping data,” a phrase that the Critical Response Group tried to trademark.
The Critical Response Group has hired lobbyists in more than 20 states to support specific standards, according to an AP review of state lobbying records. Rivals also hired lobbyists to fight the exact wording. In some states, lawmakers have a more generic label “school mapping data.”
Four companies that offer digital mapping among their services — Critical Response Group, Centegix, GeoComm and Navigate360 — have spent a combined more than $1.4 million on lobbyists in 15 states, according to an AP analysis. Their costs are unknown in some states where lobbying payments are not publicly reported.
Delaware and Virginia also chose the Critical Response Group program. Iowa has a contract with GeoComm. Other states are leaving vendor decisions to local schools.
A RESPONSE TO TRAGEDY
A US Department of Justice review of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, noted that police had only a “basic map” that did not show windows or doors connecting classrooms as they waited to engage. with the gunman.
The Texas Education Agency responded last year with new standards that require 911 agencies to provide “accurate site layout” and door designations. The Legislature reinforced this by requiring silent panic buttons and armed security officers as part of a more than $1 billion school safety initiative.
Each map can cost thousands of dollars to create, and costs can rise as maps are linked to other security systems, such as wearable panic buttons. But integration also adds value.
“If it’s not integrated with a crisis response system that can be pushed electronically to the dispatch center and the police, it’s probably going to be meaningless in the first few minutes,” said Jeremy Gulley, superintendent of the Jay County school system. , Indiana, which uses the Centegix mapping and alerting system.
Because of their detail, digital school maps are exempt from public disclosure under legislation in some states. That’s critical to school safety, said Chuck Wilson, chairman of the Partners for Safer Schools Coalition, a nonprofit coalition of education groups, law enforcement and security firms.
“If bad people had access to the drawings, that would be worse than not knowing” a school layout, Wilson said. He added, “We have to be very careful about protecting this information.”
MAPS NEED UPDATES
Many schools have long provided floor plans to local emergency responders. But they were not always digital. Like Uvalde, some plans are missing important details or are out of date as schools are renovated and expanded.
Washington began digitally mapping every school in the state 20 years ago, after the deadly Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, and provided annual funding to the Washington Sheriffs & Police Association to operate the map repository.
But over time, schools managed to update the information and the maps grew for a while. The state was underfunded and lawmakers ended the program in 2021, just as more states launched similar initiatives.
Security consultant David Corr ran the program and wishes it could continue, but said that for emergency responders, “misinformation is worse than no information.”
