Florida Teachers Hesitant To Download App Designed To Save Lives

FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami/AP) — Some Florida teachers accidental they don’t spot an app that was designed to assistance prevention lives by targeting the determination of an exigency astatine their schools.

The SaferWatch app is being utilized to comply with Alyssa’s Law, which was passed by the Florida Legislature past twelvemonth to necessitate schoolhouse districts to person immoderate benignant of mobile panic button. Legislators allocated astir $8 cardinal for the program, which is escaped to districts arsenic agelong arsenic they usage a state-approved vendor.

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Alyssa Alhadeff was 1 of the 17 radical killed successful a shooting astatine Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School connected Feb. 14, 2018. The 17-year-old’s mother, Broward County School Board subordinate Lori Alhadeff, lobbied for the law.

In the 2 months it’s been available, lone 16% of schoolhouse unit person downloaded the SaferWatch app to their phones, according to the South Florida SunSentinel.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who chairs the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, said astatine a caller gathering that lone astir 5 radical successful immoderate fixed schoolhouse person the app connected their phone.

In Broward County, officials said the hesitancy is based connected an inaccurate presumption that the app could beryllium utilized to way employees, the paper reported. Officials said the app lone works wrong schools and accesses determination accusation lone erstwhile the panic fastener connected the app is pressed for respective seconds.

Officials are present launching campaigns to dispel fears, and the app manufacturer, SaferWatch, is besides revising connection successful its idiosyncratic statement to effort to marque radical consciousness much comfortable.

“We’re successful the process of making definite the misinformation is corrected and radical person a deeper knowing of what this app does,” said Broward’s interim Superintendent Dr. Vickie Cartwright.

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They’re besides partnering with the Broward Teachers Union to impulse its members to download it.

“I’ve done immoderate testing. I’ve taken it extracurricular the parameters of a schoolhouse to spot if it works. No it doesn’t,” said Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, told the newspaper. “It’s wholly safe. This app is solely to support lives,”

The app connects straight with a 911 communications center. Users tin nonstop messages to a dispatcher and photos from their phones. In immoderate schools, the app tin adjacent automatically entree cameras successful the gathering wherever the alert came from, the paper reported.

Teachers reluctant to usage the app see Eric Garner, a TV accumulation teacher who was astatine Stoneman Douglas the time of the shooting.

“There were immoderate reddish flags. It talks astir having entree to camera rotation and entree to websites you’ve been on,” helium said.

He voiced those concerns astatine a caller gathering of the Stoneman Douglas Commission, and the president of SaferWatch, Geno Roefaro, contacted him. Garner said the treatment went well, but helium inactive hasn’t downloaded the app.

Roefaro told the paper he’s changing the connection successful the idiosyncratic statement to clarify what the app does.

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