By Matlin Smith, Las Cruces Sun-News (New Mexico)

LAS CRUCES – Centennial High School has already impressed the Las Cruces community with its large, state-of-the-art exterior, but perhaps what’s even more impressive is its inner-workings, which have been specifically designed with student safety in mind.

“CHS will be the first Las Cruces Public Schools campus where 911 call information will be broken down to the individual building and floor,” said Jeff Harris, LCPS executive director of technology support services. “That means when a 911 call is placed from the campus, the dispatch center will get much more detailed information on where the emergency is than ever before.”

“It’s an enhanced safety feature for students because the campus is so large,” he added.

Centennial High officially opened its doors to students for the first time Monday.

When someone uses one of Centennial’s 300 computer-like phones – the system doesn’t work if calls are made with a cell phone – the Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority can, through the network, pinpoint an exact location for the call. For example, Harris said they can discern which area of the gymnasium the call came from, giving emergency personnel a specific entrance to use.

“It could save several minutes and be very important for someone who is injured,” Harris said.

‘Best deterrent’
Eventually, all of the schools in the Las Cruces district will be upgraded to include this form of advanced technology.

“The technology actually becomes your best deterrent and best tool for crime prevention,” said Todd Gregory, LCPS safety and security coordinator. “The more that you add things like burglary alarms, surveillance videos, and access control, it deters that criminal element from targeting the school because they know there will be a quick response.”

“I think it’s fabulous,” said Shawna Shankle in response to a question on the Sun-News Facebook page. “Anything we can do to help keep our children safer and get emergency personnel to them faster, then it’s a good thing!”

Backup center
Harris said the Centennial campus will also serve as a backup center for some critical services within the school district – most notably the phones.

“In the event that the LCPS administration office goes down, all phones in the entire school district will automatically be re-routed through CHS.”

The district’s sophisticated phone system already allows calls to be transferred from one school office to any other one in the district, Harris said.

“Occasionally there is a situation, like a fire drill, and all of the kids are outside of the school. If a parent sees that and calls to try to get a hold of someone at the no one is inside, it can cause panic.”

In the event of such a situation, the phone system can be re-routed to anywhere in the school district so the parents can reach someone with information immediately.

“Because of that, we want to make sure that the phone system is always available, so Centennial is a back-up. If the central office was unavailable, everything will be re-routed through Centennial. It’s a disaster recovery process,” Harris said.

“I think it is a great thing! Most people don’t realize though that before more money is spent this will be good to test at CHS and see how it goes and work out any bugs that could potentially be there. The LCPS technology department is always hard at work to keep the district up and running and this was a great endeavor,” added Marlena Hartman Vargas.

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