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Grant helps improve safety at Holy Rosary Grade School
holy rosary grade school
From left to right are Chief Jason King, Tom Hausner (installer), and Principal Tanya Horne, pictured in front of one of the new panic buttons installed at Holy Rosary Grade School.

DARLINGTON — Holy Rosary Grade School is better equipped to deal with active threats to the safety of its students and staff thanks to a federal grant received by the Darlington Police Department. Darlington Police Chief Jason King recently announced the department received a COPS Office School Violence Prevention Program grant award in the amount of $16,785 to install a critical incident notification

system in each classroom at the school.

The system, known as WAVE Plus, was recently installed at Holy Rosary Grade School by SecureTech Systems, Inc. Now, with the push of a button, a detailed alarm message indicating the exact location of the emergency is transmitted to Darlington Police Officers over the two-way radios they already carry. Instead of waiting for a dispatcher or call center operator to process the alarm, the school’s call for help goes directly to first responders so they can react immediately. This can shave critical minutes off response times.

The project’s manager, Chief Jason King, is hopeful to expand use of such incident notification capabilities to the public school system in the future but pointed out Holy Rosary Grade School was the logical place to start given their unique vulnerabilities. Holy Rosary Grade School does not have many of the security measures the public school system enjoys, and yet they care for our youngest, most vulnerable students, King noted. Those issues have been resolved, though, through implementation of this new technology as alarm buttons have been placed in every classroom and multiple other locations throughout the school.

The WAVE Plus system was paid for entirely by the federal COPS Office grant. The City of Darlington and Holy Rosary Grade School did not have to contribute financially to the project. The COPS Office has

long demonstrated a commitment to school safety and to ensuring students’ success in supportive, safe environments. The COPS Office School Violence Prevention Program is a competitive award program

designed to provide funding to improve security at schools and on school grounds in the grantees’ jurisdictions through evidence-based school safety programs.