For many parents today, the second their kids rush out the door to school or slam the car shut at drop-off, the panic sets in. For the next several hours, there’s a constant fear that their children’s campus could be the next in a seemingly never-ending string of senseless school violence. It’s a sad reality, but one Raptor Technologies is trying to change.
From digital visitor management systems to continual background monitoring and AI-powered gun detection, Raptor’s suite of technology solutions gives schools the ability to institute new security and oversight protocols. Fueled by a partnership with RapidSOS, this layered approach helps teachers and administrators not only identify troubling behavior or activity in real-time, but also share information more regularly with external safety stakeholders to start to proactively flag potential issues.
“It’s a 360-view so everyone can be providing the right services for every kid at the right time,” David Rogers, Raptor’s Chief Marketing Officer, said on the latest episode of the “Safety Gap” podcast.
Together, Raptor and RapidSOS are empowering schools, businesses, and public safety officials to build safer environments for their communities, employees, and students. But our work is far from done. The recent school shooting in Wisconsin has once again shined a spotlight on this critical issue. Now, the pressure on elected officials to focus on improving school safety in 2025. To listen to the full episode, click here.
“This is not a red or blue issue,” Rogers said. “Both sides of the aisle agree we need this.”
School Safety Gaps
In September, Colt Gray shot and killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia. This tragedy could have likely been prevented.
“Unfortunately the mechanism didn’t exist to share the data, for law enforcement to share what they were seeing back to the school,” David said. “The kid didn’t get the help he needed and people have died for it.”
The bulk of emergencies that Raptor handles every day are more routine, typically a child throwing up in class, or less immediately threatening, like a moose on the school playground. But sadly, incidents like what happened in Georgia are occurring more frequently.
As threats rise, schools face their own safety gap. It’s challenging to share information on students with external stakeholders like local police departments. Teachers struggle to clearly and seamlessly relay concerns to administrators. And school leaders aren’t able to easily analyze all these signals.
“Their whole job is to connect the dots. It’s really hard to connect dots … when you’re dealing with manila folders,” said David. “Manila folders don’t tell you anything.”
With Raptor, these signals are unified and analyzed to provide comprehensive assessments. For example, a coach might notice bruising on a child’s arm in the morning. Later that day, a lunch worker sees them eating out of the trashcan. During class, teachers notice a change in behavior. And at the end of the day, the bus driver sees they don’t want to get off to go home.
Each of these instances may not be the cause of immediate alarm. But connected, they paint a troubling picture of a child needing help.
Extend the perimeter
Today, schools in the U.S. have little visibility into a student’s behavior outside of school. Without that information, it’s hard for counselors and other support staff to know the kids who may need additional attention or other intervention.
For example, in the U.K., according to David, schools can see if the police were called to a kid’s house over the weekend for domestic disturbance or if they had a run-in with the law over the summer. This “connective tissue” helps build closer coordination between public safety professionals and schools. It also helps establish 360-degree views of every child, providing the visibility that safety stakeholders need to prevent future violence.
Amid an ever-growing patchwork of different state and federal safety regulations, along with increasing pressure from communities to improve safety on their campuses, schools must invest in new ways to protect their students and faculty. Raptor and RapidSOS are able to do this without taking controversial steps. Instead, together, the two work together to ensure that schools and public safety professionals have the right information at the right time to make sure no child falls through the cracks..
“We’ve finally got the will in the country. We’ve just got to figure out how we want to do it,” said David. “Technology is going to allow us to move in that direction.”
Be sure to listen to the full episode here.