News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A joint project between Overton County Schools and the Overton/Pickett 911 District has led to the creation of app used to report suspicious behavior.
Dr. Patty Dale serves as the Overton County School Family Engagement Liaison. She says the new ‘See Something, Say Something’ app allows students and families report incidents anonymously to school officials.
“There’s a new thing that the state is wanting everybody to do, where you have a way for anyone to report anonymously any kind of bullying, illegal drug use,” Dale says, “…They can click on [the online form] and fill it out. As soon as they hit send, it automatically goes to me, the school principal, and the School Resource Officer at that school.”
Dale says having sources stay anonymous will likely help more people in the schools and community speak out against suspicious activities.
“Hopefully this helps us to find out things that people might not want to let others know and report it anonymously,” Dale says. “Maybe we can deter some things that are going on like some bullying and things like that. We want to make our schools safe for our kids, and make sure that they want to come to school. Anything that we can deter ahead of time is always helpful.”
Dale says the new app will also allow for better response time in the case of an emergency.
“The way it’s set up is I can actually go in and if it were to be something we needed to let other entities know something, such as the hospitals or law enforcement,” Dale says, “I can go through the app and let them know immediately what’s been turned into us.”
Overton/Pickett 911 Director Chris Masiongale reports the app came at no cost to either the school system or 911 district as the technology was already in place at the 911 center.
Students, parents, and community members are encouraged to report cases of bullying and illegal activity on school grounds. Dale says the app can be accessed on the district’s website at overtoncountyschools.net.
