Bangor High School is looking to upgrade its decades-old intercom system after a false alarm of the school’s new emergency alert tool revealed defects that created fear and confusion among students and staff.
Before the arrival bell one May morning, a teacher pushed the alert button to call for help too many times, launching a school-wide lockdown rather than calling for an in-school team to assist a student having a medical emergency, according to Ray Phinney, Bangor School Department spokesperson and safety coordinator.
“The system worked and our local authorities prioritized where they needed to go,” Phinney said. “For the student who had a medical emergency, to have an ambulance show up within 90 seconds is unheard of.”
The new crisis alert system, provided by Atlanta-based company Centegix, is activated when a school staff member pushes a button on a wearable badge. The number of times a staff member presses the button indicates what kind of emergency is happening and what response is needed.
The system, which went into effect in January, is designed to be simpler, faster and more exact than relying on someone to call 911 or use a phone app to report an emergency, Superintendent James Tager said. It’s also intended to give students, staff and families peace of mind at a time when school shootings across the U.S. grow increasingly more common and more deadly.
During the seven-minute lockdown, the system’s emergency lights flashed and an emergency message played over the intercom. But several students reported they weren’t aware a lockdown was happening until a teacher pulled them into a classroom or they saw other panicked students trying to find an open room to hide in.
“You had children texting parents to say goodbye and that they loved them,” Sarah Parker, a Bangor High School parent, said. “That all happened in the span of seven minutes, but it was seven minutes of terror for them. They see the news, they know what’s going on in this country.”
Dawson Nevells, who will be a junior in the fall, said he was with a group of friends in a hallway when a teacher ushered them into a classroom and instructed them to hide in a corner. They never heard the emergency alert.
The teacher was preparing students to remove the screen from the classroom window so they could flee outside if needed while they heard students running through the halls, trying doorknobs and yelling for help.
“That’s something a teacher should never have to say to their students, but this is the world we live in,” Dawson said. “The kids in the classroom were ready to break the window because they couldn’t lock or barricade the door.”
After students brought their concerns to department leaders and the school board, Phinney said the school determined the existing intercom system, which was installed in the 1980s, needs to be upgraded to a louder, clearer system. This was especially true for large areas such as the hallways outside the school’s auditorium and cafeteria.
“It’s a large space and in the morning, all students congregate in that area,” Phinney said. “If you’ve ever put 500 students in one space at the same time, their voices will deafen anything. We realized we had to increase the sound in that area.”
The intercoms in the high school’s gym and auditorium, installed in the 1960s, have a light switch to turn them on and off, so the intercom can be silenced during events such as a performance. The new system the department is looking at would override that switch so emergency alerts would sound regardless of whether the intercoms have been silenced.
The school is also looking to add intercom speakers to rooms that don’t currently have them, such as locker rooms and bathrooms.
Phinney doesn’t yet know how much a new intercom system will cost, or when it will be installed, as the department needs to secure funding for the upgrade.
In July, school administrators also asked Centegix representatives to move and add the red lights that flash during a lockdown, which the company calls “beacons,” so they’re more visible. Tager said some lights, such as those outside that were exposed to rainwater, also needed to be repaired.
While the accidental lockdown caused some panic from students and revealed deficiencies in the system, Tager and Phinney said it was useful because it gave the school an opportunity to test the system during a typical school day and see what needed to be improved.
“I think it’s good that parents and students have questions for us because there’s nothing more important [than student safety,]” Tager said. “The community wants our students to come to school, be safe, and come home every day.”
While school leaders hope a new intercom system and upgraded lights will provide clarity in future emergency alerts, Bangor High School parents and students said more needs to be done to protect students.
Students and parents asked the school department to install deadbolt locks on every door, so students can lock themselves in a room if they aren’t with a staff member who has a key to lock the doors.
Phinnney said deadbolts can sometimes cause more problems, or be an extra thing to remember in an emergency. For example, if a deadbolt is in the locked position on an open door and the door swings closed, the deadbolt will prevent the door from closing.
“In a panic, you want to reduce the number of things that are in the way,” Phinney said.
Administrators have spoken to teachers about always leaving their classrooms locked, even if the door remains open throughout the day, Phinney said. This will allow a student to be able to lock themselves in a room without having a key.
Bangor High School parents and students also asked the department to change the school’s doors so they swing into the rooms rather than out into the hallways, which prevents them from being barricaded.
Phinney said this is impossible, as Maine state fire code requires doors on rooms designed to hold 30 or more people swing out.
Lastly, students asked for window coverings on every high school classroom door to help students hide from an intruder, but Phinney said that practice is no longer recommended.
This is because covering the windows prevents law enforcement from being able to see into a room and saves them from taking the time to open every door when looking for an assailant.
In the new academic year, all schools will have multiple lockdown drills in the first month, Phinney said. The department requires schools to run four lockdown drills per year.
“A safety plan is only as good as how many times you practice it, so we want to practice it often,” Phinney said. “They’re important, they’re useful, and I think the incident we had in May proved we need to know what to do in those cases.”