Knox County Schools leaders outline security investments ahead of new school year
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – As Knox County Schools officials prepared to return to the classroom, they took the time Monday to outline improvements in the county’s school security.
“We want to make sure we hear our parents and listen to them, and obviously they’re some of the first people who see these pre-incident indicators of potential violence. We want to make sure we have that open dialogue, and that’s 24 hours a day seven days a week,” said Knox County Schools Security Chief Jason Periard.
Chief Periard was referring to a new app the district unveiled Monday called the KCS Text-A-Tip app.
The app is designed to provide an outlet anytime of the day for parents and students to report a threat or suspicious activity they have seen or been informed of.
“A lot of the time, information has been brought to parents’ attention after hours, and that’s been problematic because they didn’t know who to call because obviously administrators are out of the building at that point, so a lot of times, there’s a gap between who would notify,” Periard said.
The app is predownloaded on student Chromebooks and is available for parents in the Google Play and Apple App stores.
“We’re making it easier than ever to say something when you see something. We’re launching a new Text-A-Tip app. This allows anonymous sharing of information and a rapid response to ensure every threat is taken seriously. The link to Text-A-Tip is already preloaded on student’s Chromebook. We have one-to-one technology, that app is already loaded on there so they can immediately send that so we’re aware,” Dr. Jon Rysewyk, superintendent of Knox County Schools, said.
Knox County Schools returns to class Thursday, Aug. 8.
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