Teachers and staff attend SafeDefend Training at Ardmore High School.

On Thursday and Friday, the Limestone County School system conducted a training for its employees with its SafeDefend™ Personnel Protection System.

Each classroom across the district has a SafeDefend lock box with a biometric lock. The box contains a safety vest, wound care kit, mace, tourniquet, tactical light, and a baton. When the biometric is activated, law enforcement is automatically notified.

While these boxes have been in the classrooms, they were recently replaced with new boxes with an overhauled system.

With the old boxes, each classroom unit had to be individually programmed. With the new system, the boxes are programmed in a central location. This allows employees to be programmed into each box, not just the box in their classroom or office.

Deborah Kenyon, principal of Tanner High School, says this new feature is a huge relief.

“You could be walking a child to class you could be, you know, in the lunchroom, you could be lots of different places, and if your fingerprint’s not on there, you wouldn’t be able to open the box,” said Kenyon.

The addition of the central programming system allows increased safety with teachers and staff being more readily able to access the boxes.

“It’s a great system. We’re very blessed that Limestone County invested into the safety of our schools,” said Kenyon.

In additional to the upgraded SafeDefend systems, the school district also invested in a new badge pass system.

“They also invested in a badge pass system that allows doors to be unlocked electronically with the badges, so you don’t have to worry about an older door locking it with the key and locking it back with a key and that kind of thing,” said Kenyon. “So, it gives you a little bit more secure entrances throughout your schools. and that way people don’t fumble with keys and locks as much.”

Kenyon went on to say, “if I was a parent of a child in this school, it would make me very happy that the district is putting these types of resources into the schools.”