Carroll County Schools has invested millions of dollars in school safety over the last decade, and now it’s utilizing a new data collection tool that targets human behaviors known to improve school safety.
SchoolDog provides administrators and school resource officers an app on their phones to collect and store observations about any potential vulnerabilities they see in the schools during their daily duties. Risks could be caused by human error or even a mechanical malfunction.
SchoolDog aims to increase human awareness proactively before accidents or potential safety crisis events occur and then store actionable data that principals and district office staff can use to identify trends, vulnerabilities, training needs and even facility repairs that improve school safety for students and staff.
“We needed our safety efforts to be more data-driven,” Assistant Superintendent of Support Services Glen Harding said. “SchoolDog allows us to know when we are checking for safety concerns and also what we find when we check.”
Leaders use the software to track safety preparedness as they encounter issues. The combined data points leaders to common problems that can then be addressed and rectified.
Carroll County Schools was one of the first in Georgia to participate in a free pilot of SchoolDog during Spring 2024, and the district expanded use to all schools last August. SchoolDog is provided at no cost to the community through a member-only benefit purchased for the district by the Georgia School Board Association Risk Management Services, which provides Carroll County Schools with Workers Compensation insurance.
“SchoolDog is perfect for a data-focused district like Carroll County Schools, and that’s why they are one of the top SchoolDog users in the state,” SchoolDog co-founder and CEO Buddy Costley said. “As a resident of this county myself, it just makes me proud to see what they have done with SchoolDog to increase their safety checks throughout the district. They are using SchoolDog to be intentional and vigilant every single day, taking less things for granted, and now they have more safety-related intelligence data for real-time decision making than almost anyone in the nation.”
Director of Student Services Tim Gribben said recent crises at schools across the state and nation have reinforced the importance of having all exterior and interior doors shut and locked during the school day – a practice Carroll County has been following for several years. Principals, SROs, and system leaders use SchoolDog to record safety concerns like unlocked doors as they walk the halls every day.
“Our standard is that every door is shut and locked,” Gribben said. “If a door is unlocked, we lock it, but knowing how frequently the problem occurs can lead to better solutions like more training that emphasizes the importance of locking doors.”
“Once you know that something is not an isolated issue in one school or one occasion – that it’s not just anecdotal – you can make direct and targeted efforts to educate people and hold them accountable, and this approach is already seeing results,” Gribben said.
Costley – a Bowdon High School graduate and resident of Carrollton – developed SchoolDog after 11 years as a school superintendent and four years as Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders.
“The idea for SchoolDog was born in 2012, working with a phenomenal team of principals and district office admin, after the tragedy of Sandy Hook,” Costley said. “Our board of education members and parents wanted more than mere reassurance. They wanted to be certain that we weren’t just ‘talking’ about checking doors and safety factors; they wanted proof. Back in those days, all we had was a few random Google checklists.”
School systems focus heavily on the use of data in their daily operations, Costley said, because collecting data helps them change the future for the better and improve outcomes.
“Ask the average school system in this nation where their safety data is, and you will get puzzled looks,” Costley said. “With SchoolDog, we address this by crowdsourcing safety-related data with the SchoolDog app. Imagine dozens of administrators and school resource officers in Carroll County all using the app and collecting little 20-second pieces of information into a common data hub. With this type of access, Carroll County’s leadership is able to have more timely information to decrease the likelihood of an accident or crisis.”
SchoolDog is one of a number of safety improvements implemented by Carroll County Schools including high definition cameras, access control devices, the Centegix Crisis Alert System, the SHIELD system and 18 school resource officers on school campuses every day. Carroll County uses the SchoolDog app as a valid part of its school safety planning, as required by state law.
“School safety is something we never take lightly, and it’s an area where we are always looking to improve,” Harding said. “SchoolDog is a new tool in a large and growing toolbox of equipment, resources and strategies that are making a difference for our students, teachers and staff.”
