COBB COUNTY, Ga. — East Cobb Middle School went through a false code red alarm Tuesday, prompting parents to react on social media. The code red alarm is meant to signal schools to go into lockdown due to a potential threat in the building.
The email sent out to parents stated a human error triggered the alarm despite there being no threat on campus.
Co-founder of watchdog group Watching the Funds Cobb, Heather Tolley-Bauer, explained that the district currently uses a system called Centegix.
“There was a lot of confusion around, 'Was this [alarm] real?' It wasn’t a drill because they announce their drills. So for five minutes, teachers at the school could only assume that this was the real deal and apparently were not communicated with quickly enough to know that it was just a malfunction,” Tolley-Bauer said.
With Centegix, authorized Cobb County Schools staff can send out an alert with just clicks of a button on a wearable badge.
Prior to this system, the district had another system called AlertPoint.
“[AlertPoint] was a $5.3 million investment that then had to be replaced by another company. Same product, same IP, different company for another $2.3 million investment,” Tolley-Bauer said.
The district switched to Centegix after 11 schools simultaneously received a false alarm with AlertPoint in 2021. Back then, the district said the system had malfunctioned.
“The Centegix system is our second system because the first one was riddled with problems and never delivered on its promise. The idea of it is good. But, 'Is it the best product for our investment?' I don’t know,” Tolley-Bauer added.
As 11Alive has previously reported, this is not the first time a human error triggered a false code red alarm at a Cobb County School.
Cobb County mom Janna Jensen said three of her four kids went through one at Bullard Elementary back in May.
“It’s really hard to hear that your kid thought they were going to die that day while they were at school,” she said.
Jensen said her then-first grader, third grader, and fifth grader were traumatized after the false code red.
Her two youngest kids were at lunch when the alarm went off, and they were hurried into the kitchen’s storage closet.
“The six-year-old, in particular, said all their friends were shaking and crying and calling for their mothers,” she recalled. “One of her friends was having a panic attack. It sounded like from my six-year-old's description. She said she was hugging her and saying, ‘It's okay if we're going to die, at least we're together.'’”
On Monday, Cobb County School Superintendent Chris Ragsdale delivered the district’s State of Education. In it, he stated that he wants to focus on more code red drills.
“On the front end, there was a lot of concern about the emotion and distress. Quite honestly, I want code red drills to become just like fire drills, [so that] it’s muscle memory,” he said.
Jensen, however, does not want her kids to go through the distress they went through that day in May ever again.
“It was terrifying,” she said. “I think it was almost exactly a year after Uvalde happened. Sandy Hook wasn’t that long ago. These kids should be here with us now.”
Jensen believes kids should not grow up with these drills. Instead, she said tighter gun laws could be a more viable solution.
“The fact that we have to do all of this preparation instead of just making some laws that could make the world a little safer for kids like this… it’s really disgusting to me, actually,” she said.
11Alive reached out to the school district for comment. A district spokesperson sent us the same message that was sent out to East Cobb Middle School parents via email. It states:
As the letter to school families indicated, ‘through human error, one of our staff members triggered a code red alarm.’ The school was safe and ‘there was never any threat or danger to our students or staff, and the school quickly resumed normal operations.
Our highest priority is the safety and well-being of our students and staff, so we will continue to secure our campus vigorously.
We encourage students, staff, and parents to visit http://www.cobbshield.com to see what Cobb Schools is doing to keep our school safe. Feel free to report any safety concerns to Cobb Schools PD using the District’s Tipline by call, text, or email.’