The Cobb County School District has modified a new crisis alert system after an employee accidentally triggered a Code Red signal in 11 schools this week.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale made brief, prepared comments at a Cobb Board of Education meeting Thursday night but didn’t give many specifics, including the names of the schools.
He said it was a “human error,” and not the new system itself, that led to the inadvertent Code Red alert at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, putting the affected schools on a short lockdown.
The Cobb school district recently switched to a new crisis alert system provider and said it would conduct Code Red drills on all 112 school campuses this school year.
The district spent $2.9 million to purchase the Centigex system, which was dropped by the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district in North Carolina when parts of the system weren’t working properly.
That replaced AlertPoint, which cost the Cobb school district $5 million when it was implemented in 2017.
But that system malfunctioned in 2021 when all 16 Cobb high schools were put on lockdown due to what district officials said was a deliberate cyber attack.
Ragsdale also would not elaborate on what the changes were to the new system, called CrisisAlert System, saying that “training will be repeated to certain groups of employees.”
Nor would he saw how one employee could have triggered such an alert.
“The steps we have taken will reduce the chance of human error,” he said, adding that he couldn’t explain more because a personnel matter also is involved.
“I apologize that we have to engage in these kinds of drills,” Ragsdale said. “This is the world in which we live and we must take every step possible to ensure our students and our staff are safe.”
The Cobb school board voted Thursday night to approve a $2.8 million roofing contract for Mt. Bethel Elementary School in East Cob that is expected to be finished by July 2023.
The board also approved a contract to spend $419,518 co purchase 11 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe police vehicles for use by the Cobb County School District’s police department.
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- Cobb County Marching Band Exhibition returns in October
- Walton, Wheeler place in Top 10 in Georgia SAT scores
- Wheeler student earns perfect score on SAT
- East Cobb school employees honored by Cobb school district
- Contested Cobb school board Post 4 race heating up
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