When a motion detector went off overnight at Kromrey Middle School, a police officer called up a digital map of the building, located the detector, clicked on a live feed from the nearest camera, and relayed the intruder’s location to responding police.
Within minutes, they captured the suspect: a teenager dressed in dark clothing and a ski mask but not carrying a gun.
Jim Blodgett, the school’s security director, said the map and cameras “allowed the dispatcher to prevent things from escalating too much.” “The officer could see he looked like a student… just goofing around in the building.”
Spurred by mass shootings, thousands of school districts have hired companies to produce detailed digital maps that can help police, firefighters and medical professionals respond more quickly to emergencies.
Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, where the trespassing teen entered through the roof, was an early adopter of the practice in Wisconsin and has since provided mapping grants to nearly 200 districts.
More than 20 states have enacted or proposed digital school mapping measures in the past few years, according to an Associated Press analysis powered by bill tracking software Plural. Florida approved $14 million in grants last year. Michigan allocated $12.5 million. New Jersey allocated $12.3 million in federal pandemic relief funds to complete digital maps of every school in the state.
The Army’s Critical Response Group, led by a special operations veteran, is driving this trend. Mike Rodgers, the New Jersey-based company’s CEO, recently told lawmakers in Maryland how he used gridded digital maps during distribution and was surprised there wasn’t something similar at the school where his wife teaches. So he mapped out his school and later expanded it to 12,000 schools across the country, and that number continues to grow.
“When an emergency occurs at a school or place of worship, responders are likely the first to go there,” Rodgers told the AP. “They’re under tremendous stress and working with people they don’t know, which is the same problem the military faces overseas, and ultimately that’s why this technique was born.”
LOBBYING AND COMPETITION
Many of the state laws and bills contain nearly identical language advocated by Rodgers’ company. It requires inspection and verification at each campus and free compatibility with any software currently used by local schools and public safety agencies. These should be overlaid with aerial imagery and gridded coordinates, include “true north” and “site-specific labels” for rooms, doors, corridors, staircases, service areas, hazards, switch boxes, trauma kits, and automated external defibrillators.
Rodgers said the standards create a “competitive, fair environment” for all sellers. But when New Jersey sought a mapping contractor, Lt. Brendan Liston, State Police mapping coordinator, said Critical Response Group had “the only product available in the state that meets the regulatory criteria.”
The New Jersey law required “critical incident mapping data,” a phrase that Critical Response Group tried to trademark.
Critical Response Group has hired lobbyists in more than 20 states to advocate for certain standards, according to an AP review of state lobbying records. Rivals have also enlisted lobbyists to argue over precise wording. In some states, lawmakers have opted for the more general label “school mapping data.”
Four companies that offer digital mapping among their services — Critical Response Group, Centegix, GeoComm and Navigate360 — spent more than $1.4 million on lobbyists in 15 states, according to an AP analysis. In some states where lobbyist payments are not publicly disclosed, their costs are unknown.
Delaware and Virginia have also selected the Critical Response Group program. Iowa signed a contract with GeoComm. Other states leave vendor decisions up to local schools.
AN ANSWER TO TRAGEDY
The U.S. Department of Justice’s review of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, said police had only a “basic map” that did not show windows or doors connecting classrooms as they waited to confront the gunman.
The Texas Education Agency responded last year with new standards that require “proper site layout” and door designations to be provided to 911 agencies. The Legislature reinforced this by requiring silent panic buttons and armed security guards as part of a more than $1 billion school safety initiative.
Each map can cost several thousand dollars to create, and costs can increase as maps are connected to other security systems, such as wearable panic buttons. But integrations also add value.
“If it’s not integrated with a crisis response system that can be transmitted electronically to the dispatch center and the police, then it probably won’t mean anything to them in the first few minutes,” said Jeremy Gulley, superintendent of Jay County’s school system. Indiana uses the Centegix mapping and alerting system.
Because of their detailed information, digital school maps are exempt from public disclosure under law in some states. That’s critical to school safety, said Chuck Wilson, president of the Alliance of Partners for Safer Schools, a nonprofit coalition of education groups, law enforcement and security companies.
“If bad people had access to the drawings, that would be almost worse than not knowing the school’s plan,” Wilson said. “We have to be really careful about protecting this information,” he added.
MAPS NEED TO BE UPDATED
Many schools have long provided floor plans to local emergency responders. But they weren’t always digital. As in Uvalde, some plans lacked important details or were outdated as schools were renovated and expanded.
Washington began digitally mapping every school in the state 20 years ago after the deadly Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, providing annual funding to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs to operate the map repository.
But over time, schools stopped updating the information and the maps became stale. State funding proved inadequate, and lawmakers ended the program in 2021 as more states launched similar initiatives.
Security consultant David Corr ran the program and wishes it would continue, but said “misinformation is worse than lack of information” for emergency responders.