Lee’s Summit teachers to get emergency panic buttons in new $3.2M security system
Lee’s Summit School District officials signed off on a new security system earlier this month that would equip staff in all district buildings with emergency alert devices .
School board members approved a $3.2 million contract to purchase the Safe System, a product of the company Audio Enhancement Inc., at their Jan. 15 meeting. Funding for the program is coming from a $6 million pot of money designated for safety and security upgrades in the district, contained in a $225 million bond voters approved by a wide margin last year.
Steve Shelton, the district’s associate superintendent of operational services, told school board members earlier this month that the safety system works with an audio amplification system the district currently has available for kindergarten through second-grade classrooms. The district plans to expand the audio system to classrooms up through fifth grade and then eventually district-wide, he said.
With that system, a teacher wears a lapel microphone that allows them to speak at a conversational volume while their voice is projected throughout their room. The program approved by board members earlier this month would expand on that by giving every teacher in the district a panic button device, Shelton said.
“In the event of something happening, they can lock down the building,” he said.
The device can also alert a building’s office in the case of a non-panic button emergency, like a student having a seizure or a fight in a hallway, he said.
“We dedicated $6 million within the bond to upgrade safety and security,” Shelton said. “This is that promise.”
Superintendent David Buck pointed to a deadly school shooting in Barrow County, Georgia, in 2024, in which school staff wore similar panic buttons that alerted law enforcement as shots were being fired in a high school. Four people were killed in that incident, and others were injured.
“Time is lives,” Buck said. “Had they not had a panic button, more lives would’ve been lost.”
“I thank everyone for voting yes on the bond issue, because we want to be prepared in case something ever happened like that,” he said. “Let’s hope we never have to use it.”
Across the Kansas City metro in recent years, schools have spent hundreds of millions to upgrade their security systems due to the threat of school shootings, including reconstructing school entrances, adding metal detectors, installing security cameras, adding door locks and similar emergency alert systems, as well as hiring more school resource officers.
Silent panic alarms in schools have gained some traction after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Ten states have passed similar legislation named after Alyssa Alhadeff — one of the 17 people killed in the Parkland shooting — requiring schools to add panic alert systems, according to the group Make Our Schools Safe, an organization founded by Alyssa’s mother, Lori Alhadeff. A related bill was introduced in Congress last year, as were measures in the Missouri Senate and House of Representatives.
