Ask any parent of a K-12 student what they want their child's educational experience to be, and their answers are likely to revolve around good grades, positive friendships, and a path to college or the workforce. What may be less likely to be mentioned, but is on the minds of parents and staff across the country, is the matter of school safety.
As the summer months roll on, schools may find time to assess their safety protocols and consider new solutions.
Adopting a proactive approach to school safety is important to many educators and administrators, and a visitor management system is one way to proactively address school safety concerns.
Here's what schools should consider when looking for a visitor management system.
School safety is a concern for parents, educators, and administrators across the country. Understanding the wide range of aspects school safety encompasses is critical so that schools develop holistic policies and procedures.
At Kokomo24/7®, we see school safety as incorporating physical safety, mental health, emotional wellbeing, and digital safety.
School safety protocols should aim to prevent problems before they occur, respond effectively to incidents, and support the community when an unpredictable or harmful event occurs.
Schools should be able to use a visitor management system to welcome, screen, and manage all visitors. Doing so enhances school safety by screening visitors and providing visitors with standardized badges, showing staff that a person is cleared to be on campus.
Visitor management systems play an important role in a school's safety policies and procedures. As the first point of engagement that a non-student or non-staff member has with a school, this is an important way to welcome guests who should be on campus and prevent access to persons who should not.
To be most effective, visitor management systems should be part of a holistic school safety platform. VMS systems that are fragmented (like all of the major VMS providers in the K-12 market are) are limited in their functionalities and struggle to play a role in a holistic school safety strategy.
For schools that want a flexible VMS solution that allows them to reduce costs and consolidate vendors, Kokomo24/7® VMS+ is the best option.
Kokomo24/7®'s VMS+ allows schools to manage visitors for enhanced school safety while having the flexibility to do more. Kokomo24/7® VMS+ offers:
Why does Kokomo24/7® call our visitor management solution VMS+? Because of our software platform's flexibility, our visitor management solution enables many more solutions than other products. Schools can use Kokomo24/7® as an all-in-one platform for commonly-requested solutions like:
Choosing a VMS that is flexible and holistic is the best way to manage visitors, reduce redundancies, and protect students.
Since 2018, Kokomo24/7®’s unique configuration-based platform has helped more than 120 leading national and global organizations respond quickly to complex business and operational challenges. The Kokomo24/7® platform continues to evolve to efficiently meet the unique needs of every organization in the areas of health and safety, wellness, communications, compliance, accountability, and incident management.