Even as campus crises make headlines across the country, local school administrators are reviewing and improving their emergency procedures. Both the Fond du Lac School District and St. Mary’s Springs Academy of Fond du Lac kicked off the academic year with a series of drills to prepare teachers, staff and students for a variety of incidents that could impact on-site safety. A portion of that training featured Roomsponder, a locally developed online tool built to enhance communication and promote accountability during an emergency. “Before you can strategically react to a crisis situation, you need a clear picture of what is happening in real time,” Fond du Lac School District Health, Safety, Attendance and Traffic Coordinator Marian Sheridan said. “We needed a tool that could tell us who is safe and who faces potential danger. We also were looking for a way to streamline and control internal communication with specific individuals and groups.” Despite an abundance of products aimed at helping schools alert police during critical situations — such as panic buttons and locking systems — there wasn’t anything on the market that had the capability of accounting for people during an incident. So the Fond du Lac School District approached BrownBoots Interactive to build a custom web application to fill that void. The Roomsponder app includes every room of every building in a school district and features an intuitive, user-friendly interface so that teachers and staff can instantly deliver an account of all students, staff and visitors to incident response teams. When a school goes into a lockdown or shelter-in-place situation, teachers and staff log into Roomsponder to report where they are located, who is with them and if there are any medical issues in as few as three steps. Because it is web-based, Roomsponder can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection on a variety of devices, including laptops, tablets and smartphones. “Roomsponder has significantly improved the ability for our incident command teams to be accountable for students, staff and visitors,” Sheridan said. “And after a situation is resolved, we can use Roomsponder to coordinate reunification and pull reports to evaluate the data and adapt our crisis communication strategy.” Since its introduction into the Fond du Lac School District, Roomsponder has been used for emergency preparedness drills as well as during actual lockdown incidents. For instance, Roomsponder allowed for 100 percent accountability at a local elementary school in less than four minutes. Following the successful implementation within the Fond du Lac School District, BrownBoots Interactive formed an offshoot company, Roomsponder LLC, to make the innovative — and affordable — app available to school districts and universities of all sizes. Soon thereafter, St. Mary’s Springs Academy subscribed to Roomsponder. “Roomsponder is a user-friendly approach to student accountability in crisis situations. The product offers a streamlined approach to staff training and is a resource that adds another level of safety in our school community,” St. Mary’s Springs Academy Principal Erin Flood said. Access to Roomsponder also can be shared with first responders and medical staff to facilitate a quick response to a situation. School administrators, police, fire, and EMTs get a real-time overview of the situation inside a building from their incident command center. Roomsponder has a single purpose: giving school administrators and partnering departments the information they need when they need it most. The tool can serve as an enhancement to a school district’s existing safety tactics or the foundation of a new crisis communications strategy. “All too frequently, schools across the country are calling for a lockdown or shelter-in-place protocol — not only for active shooter incidents, but for a variety of reasons,” Sara Hathaway, President of Roomsponder LLC, said. “No matter the situation, being able to quickly account for everyone involved is crucial. Roomsponder makes that possible.”
