GAEL UnscriptED
GAEL UnscriptED, the podcast that goes beyond the headlines and handbooks to bring you unfiltered insights from Georgia’s top educational leaders, innovators, and changemakers. Hosted by Ben Wiggins, Executive Director of GAEL, this show dives deep into the challenges, opportunities, and unexpected twists that shape education today.
From leadership strategies to policy discussions—and everything in between—GAEL UnscriptED is your go-to source for candid conversations that make an impact. No scripts. No fluff. Just real talk from those leading the way in Georgia’s schools.
GAEL UnscriptED
School Safety & Alyssa’s Law: How CENTEGIX CrisisAlert™ Protects Students
The landscape of school safety has transformed dramatically in recent years, with technology now playing a pivotal role in protecting our most vulnerable populations. In this powerful episode of GAEL UnscriptED, host Ben Wiggins sits down with Mary Ford and Jay Floyd from CENTEGIX to explore how their innovative CrisisAlert™ system is revolutionizing emergency response in Georgia’s schools.
The conversation opens with a discussion of Alyssa’s Law—named after Parkland victim Alyssa Alhadeff—which requires schools to implement panic alert systems that provide instant notification and precise location details to first responders. For the 90% of Georgia’s public K-12 schools already using CENTEGIX, compliance with this legislation comes built-in.
But this episode goes far beyond active shooter scenarios. Ford and Floyd share compelling real-world stories of medical emergencies where CENTEGIX technology may have saved lives—from custodians experiencing seizures in storage closets to teachers having health episodes in parking lots. Last year alone, CENTEGIX recorded over 265,000 alerts, with more than 60% occurring outside the classroom, underscoring the importance of full campus coverage.
Listeners will also gain practical, actionable advice. The discussion covers Blueprint Mapping technology that gives first responders interactive facility maps, best practices for staff training, and tips for keeping systems regularly tested and up to date. Ford and Floyd emphasize the importance of training frequency, designating mapping administrators, and communicating safety measures to the community—providing school leaders with a clear roadmap to maximize their safety infrastructure.
Whether you are a superintendent, principal, safety director, or educator, this episode offers crucial insights and inspiration. As Jay Floyd asks, “Do you love them enough to do whatever it takes to make sure everybody’s safe?” For Georgia schools partnering with CENTEGIX, the answer is a resounding “yes.”
Welcome to Gale Unscripted, where leadership meets learning and real conversations drive real impact. I'm Ben Wiggins, executive Director of Gale. Join us as we go beyond the headlines with Georgia's top education leaders. Let's elevate the conversation. Good day Gale members and welcome to this week's exciting episode of Gale Unscripted. Today we have two very special guests from Syntegix. We've got Mary Ford and Jay Floyd. So why don't we just take a minute, mary, and introduce yourself to our listeners?
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, ben. You know we the last time we were together we were on a webinar on some of these topics, so I so appreciate being able to be here in person with you today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 2:So I lead marketing and communications for Centegix and we our team supports so many of the conferences, especially those that happen across the state of Georgia, and I've been with Centegics for about six years and the thing about being part of this team that is just so powerful is those times when, and just in unexpected ways, somebody will tell me we have CenteGICs and our teachers love it. And I'll just share one example with you. I was at a neighborhood event gathering event last night and somebody said something about Alyssa's Law and, of course, my ears perked right up and I inserted myself into that conversation and it was a teacher, actually someone from Cobb County.
Speaker 2:He said our teachers love this.
Speaker 3:And it's really.
Speaker 2:it's those moments like that that make all of our hard work really really pay off, so thanks for having us out this morning.
Speaker 3:Thank you, mary J Ben. Thanks for having us. Good to be in Athens. I'm Jay Floyd, former superintendent in Georgia, and I retired three years ago from being a superintendent and then I retired on June 30th and July 1st. I started with Cintegics, so it'd be three years, and so I work with strategic accounts, and primarily in Georgia, but, as many of us in Cintegics, it's wherever is needed, and a lot of times that's kind of what I do. My best thing that I as far as Cintegics is is concerned is I like working with the school districts on best practices and the use of Crisis Alert and training their teachers, because we want them to have success, and so I think that's very important. So that's primarily what I do with our accounts. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:And Mary, you mentioned a webinar that we had back in the summer, early June. Mary, you mentioned the webinar that we had back in the summer, early June. We were so appreciative that y'all came up with that idea and we got some help from our colleagues at PAGE and GSBA and GSSA and we had well over 470 registered participants on that webinar. Almost every school district in the state of Georgia was represented and a lot of those registrations. They would have a team of anywhere from four or five ten people sitting around the table watching that. So that was very good.
Speaker 1:We've collected a ton of questions that the listeners had some very, very good questions and we distributed those to Chris Irwin, the House Education Chair, to Linda Creebley with GEMA and Matt Cordoza of DOE, and they worked really hard to compile those answers so that we could get those out to our members. So thank you again for doing that. I know that was very, very informative. So talk to us. You brought up ELISA's law. Talk to us about what that means. As far as the significance of Sintegics for those that are already Sintegics customers and maybe there's someone out there listening and watching one of our Gale members that are not currently a Sintegics customer. How could that benefit them and take care of that requirement?
Speaker 2:Sure, ben, maybe I'll first give a couple of sentences about background, about Alyssa's Law. So, after the tragic school shooting in Parkland, florida, on Valentine's Day in 2018, one of the victim's mothers, lori Aladef, began a movement called Alyssa's Law because Lori understood that if help had gotten to her daughter faster in that situation, her daughter may be alive today. So, the concept of a panic button connecting with local responders and giving them information about exactly where help is needed. She knew how important that was.
Speaker 2:It was very personal to her where help is needed. She knew how important that was. It was very personal to her. So over the past several years, alyssa's Law has now been passed in 10 states across the country and almost 20 states have some form of Alyssa's Law under consideration. And something that is interesting about Syntegic's background is that the concept for our crisis alert products really came out of our founders listening to what school educators were saying, that they needed to help make schools a safer place and to handle tragic situations like that. So that's really those two things really kind of come together and are a part of how Syntegix got started. So now, as we have continued to support school districts across Georgia and nationwide, we are protecting over 90% of the public K-12 schools in the state and for all of our customers on crisis alert.
Speaker 2:They are already in compliance with the LISSA's law, so having the mobile panic button and the ability to connect and deliver that information who needs help and exactly where they're located directly to local law enforcement. And earlier this summer we provided a letter that went out by email and I keep saying Jay Floyd's the man. If anybody needs that letter, that's what I hear.
Speaker 2:That documents how strategics helps to helps districts comply, and there's a piece of the legislation that specifically says that anybody who already had a solution in place didn't need to do anything different. Right like they were, they were already in compliance that's right.
Speaker 1:yeah, well, you mentioned that part of your job is working with the compliance or the school districts, and I Centegics has evolved so much in the last few years, when I was at Oconee County High School as a principal, to where it's at now. I mean there's a lot of new features. The testing feature was one that we were so excited when it came out, but anyway, talk about some of those new things that have come about with strategics.
Speaker 3:The training mode is a big part of crisis alert and you know, because you're a high school principal and you kind of understand this. But the principal is the CEO of the building and it kind of goes as the principal goes what the expectations are from the principal, and so you know. As far as Centegis is concerned, you know we can't keep people from doing crazy things, but one of the things that we can do is we can give technology and equipment to help teachers keep themselves alive and keep their kids alive, and so that training mode and working directly with administrators and their responders on a regular basis is one of the most important keys to the product, and, and so part of my responsibility is, you know, I kind of feel like, if they're having success and they're using it on a regular basis as far as their staff alerts are concerned, when they do have a campus-wide alert which is directly a part of House Bill 268, the campus-wide alert then they're more prepared, and with the responders, they're more prepared as far as the campus is concerned. I know you know this, ben, but in all school shootings the history of school shootings anybody that was behind a locked door, no one was injured, and so that's what Crisis Alert does is it helps to get people in a locked situation uh, for a campus, uh, wide event as soon as possible, and but at the same time, you know every second matters, and so those responders are on their way and they're getting there as quick as they can, um, to provide help, and so that's a big part of alyssa's law is being able to get them there as quick as possible.
Speaker 3:But also the second component is having the mapping solution to be able to show responders either on their desktop or on their iPhone. You know exactly where the alert is located. That's a big part of the big part of the bill, and it doesn't matter if it's on different floors, different levels. You have to have the ability to be able to locate, and so that's, that's a big part of the bill. Now we're going to talk about a little bit later on our blueprint mapping, and so I'd like to get into that to how they can be compliant and how they can use our solution to make that part of the bill that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go ahead and talk about the mapping, because that was one of the big questions we got from some of our listeners and Gail members leading up to the webinar that you all hosted in June was making sure, with the new requirements on House Bill 268, of all the things that now have to be included on that mapping everything from AED machines to exits, everything from AED machines to exits and so that was one of the questions that people had was, if we have Cintegics, do we already have that capability? Is that something that we have to do as a district or is that something that Cintegics does? And I think they were very relieved and excited to find out that they could do it themselves or you all would help them go through training to do that. So maybe talk about that mapping a little bit more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, out of the you said 470 registered. I feel like.
Speaker 3:I had 470 phone calls. But anyway, as far as the mapping goes, you know, for the districts every person that has crisis alert they also have the blueprint mapping capability at no additional charge, and so the biggest thing is that they are set up and, as far as you know, administrative wise, they know exactly who's operating their maps. So the first thing I do is I ask them to determine who are going to be your blueprint mapping administrators, and they can do that by sending that name and email address to support at centegiscom and they will be signed up as an administrator for blueprint mapping. So that's the first thing that they need to do. The next thing that they need to do is determine if they need to be trained. If our immediate contact at the district has been trained, then, of course, they can retrain and they can train the other staff members that have admin access. But if they need training, we can also do that by just sending, you know a message to support at Centegicscom, and they can do online training with them to show them how to tag their assets, because that is a big part of the bill as well is that you tag your assets, and when I say assets, I'm talking about your AEDs, your fire extinguishers, your cameras.
Speaker 3:You know all of those things that are important in an emergency, so everybody knows where those are located and I like to tell the districts. You need to look at it like I'm somebody coming to your school and I have never been to your school before. But what information do I need on that map so that I can see where you know what I'm doing and where I'm going? And so that's the most important thing and, and you know, one of the best practices for districts is that they have a plan for training new employees, and that includes new responders and that includes new people at the school level that are working with the admin panel. So that's one of the best practices that they provide a way to train. You know from being in education, being a superintendent, you have mandated reporter training that you have to have. So I look at it like Synthesics is just as important. They should have some type of module where they train new employees, and so that's a big part of it.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, Mary, we've talked a lot about the safety component, which is obviously on the forefront of everyone's minds, but what I'm still reminded of is in my experience as a principal and superintendent. Instead, I think of all the benefits we were able to use Syntegics for with health-related issues. I mean, we had a custodian one time that was in a closet after school hours and had a seizure but still was able to push the Syntegix button, and without that button I don't know how long that custodian would have stayed in there. There was still an administrator on campus. The SRO was still on campus, able to find. We had a teacher one time walking in the parking lot and had a health-related episode coming in, and one of her colleagues was able to quickly push the button. So talk just a little bit about those advantages for Syntegics, beyond just the unthinkable that Syntegics prepares us for.
Speaker 2:Sure, and thank you for sharing some of those stories. I trust that all of those individuals are well and thriving.
Speaker 1:today they are. That's good to hear.
Speaker 2:Thank you for bringing up the point about everyday use of the badge, because that is literally what we do find. We recently published our school safety change report and it's a summary of the highlights from all the usage from last year and we found that there were over 265,000 crisis alert alerts that were initiated. So that's a lot of usage and it tells us some interesting things. One point is that for last school year, about 60% of the alerts were outside the classroom, so really having campus-wide coverage and being able to use your badge and call for help anywhere is important. There is a healthy percentage of the alerts that are related to medical situations, and some of the most powerful stories that we got from customers are similar to the ones that you just shared, where they just can't wait to tell us how we helped them save someone's life, because they knew that help was needed. Like everybody knew immediately and they knew where to go and, to the point of why mapping is so important, they knew where the nearby assets were to help out in that situation.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So we find that really it's about, on average, once a week from, if you just do the big averages, about once a week. A school is needing to use crisis alert.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, talk to us a little bit about how districts, or what they can do next with their strategic solutions.
Speaker 3:Well, the best thing to do is prepare him for the school year, just like he would with anything else, and we have a 2025-26, fy26 for the school system, a start guide for the school year, and so they can look that up at Centegiscom or they can request that, and so it went out to all of our customers as well, so somebody should have a copy that went at the district.
Speaker 3:So that went out. But you know they need to follow that startup guide to start school to make sure that they, you know, have prepared for time for badge training mode, that they prepared time for testing before school starts. So there's several things that they do need to have a checklist that they follow through with in preparation for starting school and that includes having a plan for new teachers and new employees, but that also includes new administrators I mean there's a lot of turnover having a specific plan to train those responders because you don't want the information to get lost.
Speaker 3:You know as you move through and so it's important that they do that. It's important that they have people in place that are managing their their maps. One thing that's great about blueprint mapping with strategics is that it's a live map and it's real-time map, and the district has the ability to make changes and edit those maps without sending it to us for approval or without having to send it back. It's real time, it's their map, it belongs to them, they can print it, share it with anybody that they need to, and so it's a great time to make sure that everything is up to date and that they also have a plan for reaching out to have drills during the school year. I mean, that's one thing that's kind of mandated in the state. Now Go ahead and setting those dates and planning. That's very important. It helps for everything to go a lot smoother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's an important part you bring up. You know we've always done fire drills and severe weather drills and now you begin to see more and more school districts on their own that were doing lockdown drills. Of course now it's mandated, but I think that is extremely important. I know most of them involved not only their SROs but all of their local law enforcement and emergency personnel. The last thing you want to happen is a bad battery on a badge because no one's been testing those or looking at those. And from my memory I think you've got on the report I could pull up by school and I could see if some batteries were getting close to ending their battery life. Is that still how Sintegix works? I've been out of it for a little while now, but is that still the case, mary?
Speaker 3:Well, the best practice is that there is somebody at the school level that monitors the admin panel on a regular basis, and that includes monitoring badges, and so we send out health reports as well so you know they get those health reports, but the biggest thing is making sure that you know everybody is in place, that everybody's been trained. You mentioned the training mode. It's not necessarily testing it's training mode. So what it does is it sends it into a mode where the alert will not alert 911.
Speaker 3:It will not alert you know all the responders, but what it does is it gives you an opportunity to see what this button feels like If you've never pressed the button you may be one of those teachers where you haven't used it, but if you've never pressed it, you're not real sure what that feels like.
Speaker 3:And so they can do a three-button press, they can do the eight-button press during the training mode, and another great feature about that is there's a QR code that the administrators can scan, and they scan that QR code, and every time that this button is pressed during the time that they've set up for training mode, then they see every employee that presses their badge that used the training time. So it's really it's training to use the badge. It's not necessarily testing the system.
Speaker 3:Testing the system is a total different animal, and so you know even Barrow County, when they had their tragedy, I mean it was incredible that the day before they actually did a training session. And so those training sessions or testing sessions are very important, but the badge training mode is very important so the employees know what those badges feel like that's right and I think you bring up a good point.
Speaker 1:I know that the teachers, the parapros, the secretaries, custodians, everybody they get this sense of comfort or relief. Number one having a badge of their own bus drivers, everyone but being able to train, put it in the training mode and them actually push and feel the vibration of the badge. I really do think helps them see how that works and know that they've just sent an immediate message to not only the school leaders but also the SROs and the local law enforcement. I think that's a very important part of that. Testing and training, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was in a school district at the beginning of last year helping them with their staff training, and one of the things they did is they literally put the admin panel up on the screen in front of the room so that everybody could see all of their training alerts coming in, and so that's what the staff love knowing okay, I can do my three-click, I do my eight click and then I see it come up right there in just a couple seconds, and it just gives me that confidence.
Speaker 2:Now I really understand how this is going to work.
Speaker 1:That's right. I know some staffs principals every time they have a monthly faculty meeting they do the training, just because some of them whether it's an assistant principal or their administrative assistant they're looking at the badge health, they're keeping up with that, making sure if any badges or batteries are going bad. So I think there's some great ideas that don't take much time but keeps it at the forefront of everyone's attention.
Speaker 3:Well, the goal is to eliminate some of that stress that the teachers may have, and I know that when I was superintendent my special programs teachers, I got email after email. Mr Floyd, you just do not understand how much this has relieved some of my tension, because I do have several kids that have seizures on a regular basis. They have medical issues, and then I felt 100% responsible for those, and so now that I know that I can get help immediately, those are awesome things.
Speaker 3:And then as a superintendent, when I retired, I got four very personal letters and they were from parents and they were from parents from kids that had medical issues, thanking me for the alert system. And you know, one parent was. You know I had a hard time sending my kid to public school because I knew that he was going to have seizures and he was going to have stress. And it turned out that you guys can handle it a whole lot better than we can at home.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:And that was huge for me. But out of all the letters I could have gotten, as superintendent the four letters that I got was about crisis alert and contagious. I thought that was pretty awesome. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:That is really good. Well, how else can educational leaders learn about any school safety best practices? You mentioned that. That's really what y'all are about is helping educators understand that. Maybe they're listening to this podcast or they're watching. They're a new superintendent, maybe they're a new school safety director. You're seeing those positions pop up more and more frequent around the state. Maybe they're a new principal and they go. Oh, I want some more information. I didn't know about that training mode. I didn't know about being able to test for the badge. Help, who can they call? Who is the point of contact for them for some specific training or information on best practices?
Speaker 3:Well, jay Floyd, the best thing that they could do is send that to support Anything that they need. If they send it to support at Centegicscom it will go to the right place. But of course they can email me or they can call me. But it is important that they use that opportunity to send it in to support, regardless of what it is.
Speaker 3:One of the things you do not want to happen is that you kind of lose your training edge along the way because you've had some turnover as far as administrators go and as responders go.
Speaker 3:You know, I always recommend that if they have new special administrators or principals, that they train those responders first, and then the responders can then retrain everybody that needs to be trained.
Speaker 3:But it's one of those things to where you know, in today's day and time it has become a very important piece of technology for the district, and so if it's an important piece of technology, then you want to make sure that you're using it correctly and that you have training, that you do the badge training mode, that you work with your teachers. A lot of times you have to define what does a three-button click mean? What are some examples of what that is as far as my district is concerned. And then what are some examples of a campus-wide alert and locking down the building, and so you always have to keep those things at the forefront and lock them down in the building. And so you always have to keep those things at the forefront and really in your best practices as far as the school level is concerned. When they're having conversations about those, that's the best thing that could happen.
Speaker 3:I'm having conversations about those and everybody kind of understands what to do, what not to do and how to handle situations, and that's an important part of the training.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I remember one of my last jobs superintendent the sheriff of that county was speaking to I can't remember if it was the chamber or Rotary or someone and the sheriff even made the comment he said you know, with the locked doors, with the external things that the school district has in place and with Syntegics, he used to say the only place safer and harder to gain access in that county was to his jail than the public schools. So I think that's important for us to remind our listeners and our stakeholders and our communities that public schools have come a long, long way as far as the safety features, and strategics plays a huge part in that, and so I think that's an important message to keep sending to our stakeholders so they do feel more comfortable about sending their kids to school to our stakeholders so they do feel more comfortable about sending their kids to school.
Speaker 2:And, ben, one of the things that we see a lot of school districts do, especially as part of the back to school preparation, is to do sometimes it's called a media day or a demo day and invite different stakeholders from the media, maybe new parents, those kinds of people who are not yet familiar with the broader view of how Syntegics works, and it's a great way to just put out to all of your community. Here's some of the things that we're doing to keep our school safe, and we just we really see that parents and even new teachers really appreciate that extra level of communication, so that's also on our best practice list for coming back, to school.
Speaker 1:That's a great idea for some back to school. I think about local school council meetings. I know GSBA has the Villa program. I hear of a lot of school districts that do that, but I really like the idea of inviting the media there too.
Speaker 2:And we have a communications kit that is available on our support site if people need some guidance about how to pull one of those off.
Speaker 2:I can tell you that what I have found in working with so many communications directors from school districts is that they are really good at their jobs, but we are always here to support if there's any help that's needed. And if I could add in also one comment to Jay's point about training, our support site also has some great videos training videos for different roles and they are the kind of resource that districts can load into their own LMS and deliver it along with any other training that they may be providing to their teachers or staff as part of back to school that's awesome Fair.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, you mentioned Rotary. As far as a community-wide communication, you can't do enough to let people in your community know. And you mentioned Rotary. I have actually gone to speak about 15 different Rotaries in different counties, so I am available for that if anybody would like. I've got a great.
Speaker 1:Call him up. Call Jay Fuller for speaking engagements as well.
Speaker 3:I've got a great rotary program. It does have a few dad jokes in it, but I do have a good program to show the community and I've always been impressed in those type meetings where the people in the community. I had no idea that our school district had this I had no idea that we had this capability. This makes me feel so good.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:And that's basically why I continue doing it.
Speaker 1:That's a great point and for those listening or watching online to this podcast, it's probably a great reminder to make sure that, as a school district and a school as you are sharing that with your stakeholders so that they know what you've got with Syntegics and all the safety features, and just how quick that response is that your sheriff's office police department gets that instant communication. Well, is there anything else as we wrap up this podcast that you would like to share for our listeners about Syntegics, before we call it an episode.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'll just summarize with, for our Georgia districts the crisis alert, the panic button part of the law is all good and covered and, when it comes to mapping, our safety blueprint enables people to be in compliance, enables people to be in compliance and contacting Centegics to get all that set up so that you meet that deadline. That would be a key step for those who haven't already done the part of tagging their assets and putting the room information all those details that are required of the law. We can help get that done. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Good, jay, you got anything we can help get that done. That's awesome. Good Jay, you got anything. Just one thing I've always had a, I guess, a question or a philosophy, I don't know what it is, you know, do you love them enough? And the bottom line is, do you love them enough that you'll do whatever it takes to make sure everybody's safe and that everybody's taken care of? And it takes, it takes effort in all these areas to make sure that you are above reproach as far as safety is concerned, and so that's a very important part of it, and I'm so glad that I'm part of a company that I feel like we're making a huge impact, and I get to see people like you that are in education, and so I love that part. So reach out to Syntegics for any need that you have.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Syntegics is a fantastic partner of Gale, has been for years and years. We are very appreciative of all the things that Syntegics does for Gale and I do think that it just makes school districts so much more at ease to know with this House Bill 268, if you're a Cintegix customer you're covered. You know there's some little nuances and some details that we're getting some information still. Some of those timelines won't be until future years, but most of those aren't related to the Cintegix aspect. They're more about student record transfers and that kind of stuff. So I think it's just amazing of how well Cintegics has already met so many of the requirements of House Bill 268. So thank you, thank you listeners, for watching today another episode of Gale Unscripted.
