THE Alamosa School District will implement two new safety measures across all of its campuses in the coming weeks with the introduction of armed private security guards and a QR-code enabled security kit known as RedBag which will be located in every classroom.
School district employees last Friday went through an initial training on the use of the RedBag and how it becomes both a cloud-based internal communication system through QR code activation as well as emergency first aid.
The Alamosa School Board in January approved a contract with Aquila Protective Services to provide school security for the remainder of the school year. The decision came after the school board felt a sense of urgency to increase school security following a swatting incident at Alamosa High and other security concerns raised during the fall semester.
Ortega Middle School faculty and staff at Red Bag training on Friday, Feb. 3. The school will be the first in the district to implement the program.
THE school board, when it first took up the topic last year, initially debated whether to train its own school resource officers or contract with a private security firm. The board could still shift to employing its own school resource officers in future school years but will work with Aquila through the rest of the 2022-23 academic year.
Aquila does business as Denver Metro Protective Services in Aurora.
Aquila will have a security officer at each of the four school campuses, which includes Alamosa Elementary, Alamosa High, Ortega Middle, and nearby Alamosa Alternative High School.
Under the contract with Alamosa Schools, Aquila will maintain a fifth security officer as a roaming officer. The school district also will rent vehicles that will have security markings as part of its enhanced measures with the private firm.
“They are going to be armed and trained and ready to act in case of an emergency,” Assistant Superintendent Luis Murillo said on the most recent episode of the school district’s Radio Education podcast. It was on the podcast that Murillo and host Adriana Chapa discussed the school district’s enhanced security measures.
You can listen to Radio Education here. It’s part of the school district’s efforts to increase its communication efforts.
“We want them to be part of our community, and we want them to get to know our students, our staff, and our teachers,” Murillo said of the armed private security guards.
The contract with Aquila will cost the school district $275 per day, per guard. The security guards will remain on the campuses during the summer if the school district decides to offer summer classes to students to make up credits. The school district will also pay $98 per day to lease security vehicles.
The Colorado Department of Education has been distributing Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grants to school districts to pay for enhanced security measures, among other school needs post-COVID. The state funds are a pass through from the federal government’s COVID-19 relief funding bills.
During their initial training on the RedBag, teachers, staff and administrators learned how to activate the security kit through a QR tag. They were then given a demonstration on the incident command functions and how internal communications occur during a lockdown situation.
For the employees it was a learning experience, with more training and emergency drills on the horizon. A RedBag will be located behind every door in every school building in Alamosa so that it is ready for use during a lockdown situation. Ortega Middle School is the first to be outfitted with RedBags.
The Cherry Creek School District is the largest school district in Colorado to implement the use of the RedBag system and has provided testimonials to encourage other school districts to use the cloud-based technology security kit.
