In this featured piece by Security Guys News, Terry Swanson, president and CEO of Singlewire Software, draws on a year of real K-12 notification data to make a counterintuitive point: readiness depends on the actions schools take every day, not the rare emergency. Across roughly 16,000 schools and more than 19 million notifications in the 2025-26 school year, automated bell schedules and paging made up 88% of all messaging, while the one-button emergency plans built for a serious incident accounted for about half of 1%. The article argues that a school paging its front office six times a day is quietly proving the same speakers, phones, and message paths will work when a real event arrives — and that the decision to commit a building should stay with people, even as everything around it is automated.
Key Takeaways
- Readiness is about the common action, not the rare one: a school that pages its front office daily is proving the same speakers, phones, desktops, and message paths it will rely on in an emergency, so the mechanics are already familiar when it counts.
- Everyday messaging dominates: of more than 19 million notifications across about 16,000 schools in 2025-26, automated bell schedules made up about 60% and paging another 28% — together 88% of all K-12 communication — while one-button emergency plans accounted for roughly half of 1%.
- Lockdown is the default response to a wide range of situations, not just the extreme: schools sent more than 48,000 lockdown messages over the year, compared with 32 that specifically described an active shooter — a reminder that the common safety actions, aligned with the Standard Response Protocol from The “I Love U Guys” Foundation, matter far more than the rarest scenario.
- The hand-off to law enforcement is where time is lost: when internal alerts and the 911 call aren’t coordinated, the two can land minutes apart just as a situation changes fastest, but a system that reaches every device inside and notifies outside responders from a single action gives everyone the same information at once.
- Keep the consequential decision with people: a building-wide alert can’t be unsent, so the call to commit a building should rest with those accountable for the outcome and the staff most likely to spot trouble first, trained to raise a hand the moment something feels wrong.
Original Story
A notification that commits a building cannot be unsent. Once the speakers fire and the phones light, staff have already moved and responders are en route. The cost of a false alert is an evacuation that did not need to happen and trust that erodes the next time. That is why the decision itself stays manual even when everything around it is automated.
Terry Swanson, president and chief executive of Singlewire Software, said in written comments to Security Guys News that the point of running notifications every day is that very little needs to change when a lockdown occurs. “A building that pages the front office six times a day is not practicing for a lockdown in any formal sense. But it is proving the same speakers, the same phones, the same desktops, and the same message paths work, every day, in front of everyone. When a real event arrives, the mechanics are already familiar. Nobody is learning the interface under pressure.”
What stays manual is the decision. Everything around it can be automated: pulling the location of an activated panic button, surfacing the relevant camera, sending on-site security to look. A building-wide notification is a commitment organizations want to be certain of before sending. Authority to commit the building needs to live in two places: with people accountable for the outcome, such as security personnel, leaders and facility managers, and with the day-to-day staff most likely to see something first. Staff need to be trained to raise a hand the moment something feels wrong, without weighing whether it is serious enough. “Hesitation at that end of the process is far more costly than a signal that turns out to be nothing.”
The same fragmentation is already on the record. In Security Guys News coverage of the ANSI/ASIS school security standard Jeffrey Slotnick, co-chair of the ASIS School Security Standard Technical Committee, said: “This is a proactive tool to serve schools across the globe by providing practical, actionable guidance for those on how to secure learning environments while maintaining focus on their primary mission of education.” The standard exists. Daily practice still decides whether the paths work.