TROY — Troy City Schools has installed a new alarm system for active shooters after experiencing problems with the previous technology.
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As reported on News Center 7 at 5:00, Troy City Schools Superintendent Chris Piper said they needed to make the change.
“We knew we needed to do something different,” Piper said.
Piper showed News Center 7′s Mason Fletcher the red boxes mounted to school walls, with a button inside.
The active-shooter alarm is set off when the button is pressed.
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“If this button is pressed, it alerts local PD, and it goes over the radios instantly,” Piper said.
This button is brand new to the district’s alarm system.
“We had a system in place last year that we had some problems with and actually had a false alarm go off,” Piper said.
As previously reported by News Center 7, Troy City Schools experienced three false alarms.
Two of the false alarms occurred at Troy High School and the third at Hook Elementary.
“It was a combination of keystrokes last year that would initiate the alarm. And we thought that that was kind of foolproof, but we proved that that not to be the case,” Piper said.
The false alarms were traumatic for both students and staff.
“Thankful that it wasn’t real, but also it really was super emotional for all of us,” Troy High School Principal Alexis Deedrick said.
Deedrick said outside of the false alarm, the responses were efficient and went according to plan.
The district hopes this update will eliminate the chance for another false alarm.
“We believe very strongly that had that been a real situation, it would have saved lives that day,” Deedrick said. “So that’s why moving forward on something like this we felt was still important.”
The new alarms will be tested over winter break and will be active when school starts back up in January.
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