A new Pennsylvania law will make schools safer by requiring districts to develop higher-quality maps of buildings to aid crews that respond to emergencies, officials said.<\/p>\n
The mandate comes from Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1390, which passed in June and amended the Pennsylvania School Code.<\/p>\n
When an emergency occurs, it is crucial that the people responding have the accurate information they need immediately to get inside and better protect students, said state Sen. Dave Argall, a Schuylkill County Republican who co-sponsored the bill.<\/p>\n
The bill establishes \u201cuniform, high-quality standards for digital school mapping technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt addresses concerns that many schools rely on outdated or inconsistent floor plans that can make it more difficult for first responders, law enforcement and emergency personnel to navigate a building during a crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now when districts contract for school mapping services, those maps must be in formats that integrate with and are viewable within software platforms used in federal, state and municipal public safety agencies and law enforcement agencies that serve the district.<\/p>\n
School mapping services contractors must provide the maps to authorized law enforcement and emergency responders at no cost, with authorization by the district.<\/p>\n
Maps must be in formats capable of being viewed, printed, shared electronically and, if requested, digitally integrated into interactive mobile platforms in use.<\/p>\n
There are also new rules to help ensure that the maps are clear and accurate, with current floor plans overlaid on verified aerial imagery of the school campus. The maps and floor plans must include site-specific labeling for school structures, such as room names, hallway designations, exterior door numbers, stairwell numbers, the locations of hazards, athletic fields, surrounding roads and outbuildings.<\/p>\n
The maps and data must be kept confidential, other than to emergency agencies.<\/p>\n
Shenandoah Valley School District Superintendent Brian Waite said that the law makes sense and is a positive step.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving accurate, standardized digital building maps will help ensure first responders have the information they need during an emergency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
From his district\u2019s perspective, though, the key will be making sure the law is accompanied by the financial resources necessary to maintain accurate information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new Pennsylvania law will make schools safer by requiring districts to develop higher-quality maps of buildings to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[227,182,883,139,28,30,29,50,231,91573,6056],"class_list":["post-274122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-education","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-politics","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-shenandoah","tag-top-stories-rhr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}