Texas City Independent School District Taking Security to A New High-Tech Level
Texas City is located 20 minutes from Santa Fe High School. Two years ago, a gunman went into the school and killed 10 people.
The Texas City Independent School District in Texas City hired Mike Matranga and gave him a $6.5 million budget to overhaul school safety protocols.
Matranga is a Secret Service veteran who has 12-years of service under his belt. He has been deployed to various countries and war zones.
As of February 14, some of the safety upgrades include special locks and reinforced glass in the classroom doors.
Technologically speaking, the district has now been fitted with hundreds of cameras in all 14 of their schools. At any given time two dozen of them the capability of facial recognition. Right now, the software has a success rate of about 70% when there is an alert.
Teachers have also been “fitted” with an app that can lock down the entire school system with a touch of a button if a security alert arises.
Students in the school also have the capability of reporting tips online.
There is software that the school has begun using that scans social media and the dark web looking for potential security threats. Each of the 14 schools has behavioral profiles that have been created for each of them, tracking issues like in and out of school suspension problems that identify possible at-risk students.
People are coming back at Matranga saying he is being too radical with the safety precautions. They believe that they are radical and violate the privacy of the students. In a world where school shootings are becoming a normal disruption, Matranga says he won’t be sorry if he keeps students safe from it.
Matranga also went on to say that education is free and if someone doesn’t like what he and the school district are doing, they don’t have to send their child to Texas City Independent School District for an education.
