ATLANTA — Today is the first day of school for students in two metro Atlanta school districts.
Students will be filling the halls in Forsyth, Carroll and Coweta counties today, and there are changes for each district as classes get underway.
Count on Channel 2 Action News This Morning starting at 4:30 a.m. for full “Back 2 School” coverage, what families can expect and the impact on traffic for everyone.
Forsyth County
In Forsyth County, all teachers and staff will be wearing panic-button badges.
State law requires all schools to have this alarm system ready to go this school year. The law came about after the mass shooting at Apalachee High School two years ago.
The Forsyth County Board of Education approved a $2.4 million contract for the badges.
They are wearable panic buttons from Centegix, a company based in Cobb County.
The alarms allow teachers and school employees to press a button in case of a threatening incident or emergency.
The system displays a map showing who sent the alert and the person’s location.
The contract also includes color-coded strobe lights in nearly all classrooms.
Forsyth County Superintendent Mitch Young said every teacher and administrator will wear the device.
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“You can push it a certain number of times, and it puts your school on a lockdown. If you see something as horrific as a gun or a weapon, it immediately alerts law enforcement -- and time is everything in those situations,” Young said.
If you press the button just once, it indicates a medical or behavior problem.
But pressing it eight more times signals a more urgent situation, such as an armed intruder.
Also new this year for the district, parents will soon have a way to track their children’s buses in real time.
The school district is putting tablets in all of its buses, which are designed to help drivers navigate their routes.
Up until now, drivers have had to use printed directions to navigate their routes.
All of Forsyth County’s school buses will get tablets that are similar to the screen technology used in modern cars.
The district expects to have all of its more than 400 buses equipped by the end of the school year.
The school system signed a contract with BusRight, a tech company, to install the devices, which cost more than $1,200 apiece.
Young said buses serving the northern end of the county will get the tablets first.
“We’re really excited. I mean, it’s gonna help us not just in terms of tracking the buses, but giving parents that real-time awareness of where their children are,” Young said.
Parents will be able to download an app on their phones that shows the location of their child’s bus and when it will arrive at the bus stop.
Drivers said the tablets will make their jobs easier because their routes will be on a screen with turn-by-turn navigation.
The devices will give drivers road conditions and reroute them around any problems.
“It’s also gonna help us with timekeeping and rerouting and, quite frankly, keeping track of their hours as hourly employees,” Young said.
The app will be limited to parents with students enrolled in Forsyth County Schools.
The first 100 tablets were installed last spring, and the goal is to get the entire fleet equipped before the end of the school year.
Coweta County
In Coweta County, there will be a big change for students when it comes to cell phones.
They won’t be allowed at all in any of the high schools.
Starting this school year, district policy says students can’t have their phones out, even between classes.
Freshmen at East Coweta got to tour the high school, meet their teachers and get ready for this morning at orientation.
“School is not school without these children here, so all very excited for kids to be back,” East Coweta High School principal Stefanie Easterwood said.
Coweta schools did a district-wide re-examination of technology, from screen time in the youngest grades to cell phone access for older students.
All three high schools will adopt the same policy as K-8, to meet the new state law a year early before going into effect next year.
“We just want to make sure they’re engaged and free of distractions in the classroom to make sure their learning,” Easterwood said
That means cell phones need to be off and in bookbags or purses all day.
“I talk to my mom throughout the day. I feel it will be weird not being able to text her if something goes wrong,” East Coweta Senior Adrienne Ray said.
While not a huge issue for incoming freshmen, the current seniors said it will be a big change, and some have concerns if there were ever an emergency on campus.
“If something happened, I couldn’t contact my parents at all. It’s very weird that I can’t do that. But I get it, I understand,” East Coweta Senior Addie Baker said.
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