Now IMS: Enhancing safety at Fort Bend Independent School District
About Fort Bend ISD
Fort Bend Independent School District serves 78,500 students in 80 schools in Texas, making it one of the largest districts in the state.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Now IMS
Now IMS offers intelligent management services for safety, communications, and other activities across industries, including education and professional sports.
Google Cloud and Now IMS help Fort Bend Independent School District (ISD) solve for student safety and emergency communications challenges across the district’s 80 schools.
Google Cloud results
- Increases visibility of safety threats for school administrators, law enforcement, and faculty
- Provides students with an anonymous channel to communicate bullying, suspicious activity, threats, and other dangers district-wide
- Unified risk identification and prevention for 80 schools and 78,500 students
- Fosters real-time communication and insights with students, administrators, law enforcement, faculty, and the community as a whole
- Supports 1,088 downloads in the first two weeks following launch
Improves school safety with advanced application-based communications
School systems across the United States work to combat threats to student safety such as gun violence, bullying, and suicide prevention. Technology is increasingly viewed as a solution to many of the safety challenges schools face, but finding ways to translate ideas and safety data into action can be difficult.
Now IMS, based in Houston, Texas, has worked with organizations like the National Football League to secure their large public events for years. The company became a Google Cloud partner to solve some of the problems associated with turning the focus away from infrastructure management and toward customer solution delivery.
It sought a cloud provider that offered auto-scaling solutions, encrypted database services, straightforward pricing, and more. Google Cloud checked all of those boxes, and Now IMS has had a strong relationship with Google Cloud since becoming a partner.
After a deadly shooting at Santa Fe High School in a nearby community, Now IMS co-founder John Rodkey began to consider how the company’s applications could enhance school safety.
“Santa Fe is about an hour from where I live, so it hit really close to home,” says John. “Given our technology’s success in other industries, I knew there must be a way we could use it to protect people in schools. I called Fort Bend ISD Police Chief David Rider, and that was where the idea for a new app began.”
Fort Bend ISD had already launched a safety advisory committee in hopes of developing ways to improve school safety. With Now IMS, they now have technology to help achieve their goals.
Better communication means stronger school safety
Strong communication throughout a district has proven to be one of the most effective tools to prevent security threats. Fort Bend ISD and Now IMS envisioned an app that would provide the entire district with a unified communication channel for a range of purposes.
“We are trying to prevent tragedies like school shootings, but we also want to deter bullying, improve communications to support students in crisis situations, combat drugs on campuses, and more,” says Angelique Myers, Public Information Officer at Fort Bend ISD. “We knew that for the app to be effective, we would need buy in from the many stakeholders in our community, especially our students.”
Law enforcement and public safety officials, teachers, criminal justice students, administrative staff, and parents worked together to conceptualize an app. For it to work, the safety committee wanted the app to allow for anonymous, real-time incidents and intelligence to be shared, as well as a back end that would enable administrators and law enforcement officials to identify risks as they are notified by students, faculty, and others.
The app addressed all of those needs and more. Students can download the app onto their phones and seamlessly disclose dangerous activities anonymously through an intuitive interface. Once into the interface, there are 12 icons representing the various categories of reports ranging from bullying and suicide prevention to guns and suspicious packages.
Now IMS also accounted for the need for complete discretion, so students do not need to download the app—they can simply scan a QR code found on the back of their student identification cards or posters hung across the district, to write a report in the system.
“Google Cloud helped make this app one-of-a-kind. We have a proof of concept that many school districts will view as a necessity to keep their students and faculty members safe.”
—John Rodkey, co-founder, Now IMSPowering the app with best-in-class technology
Now IMS built the Fort Bend ISD See Something, Share Something app using a range of Google Cloud tools. Cloud Run is used for all of its stateless HTTP including its REST API with the benefit of Firebase CDN for cache responses, etc. Cloud Functions are used for triggers, as an example allowing for photos to be uploaded and processed in real-time and at scale with Cloud Vision. Firestore is the main datastore for incident details and provides real-time sync across multiple clients, and Cloud Storage acts as the storage for images, videos, and other documents to capture current and historic information. Data is exported to BigQuery to run analysis and discover patterns for different types of intelligence.
Cloud Vision API is used to run analysis of images uploaded by students, further enhancing the reports generated through Looker Studio.
“The district could see that the same suspicious van, for example, was reported by students at three different schools in one month. This wouldn’t be possible without more advanced communications and analytics solutions,” says John. “Because of this, law enforcement and district leaders can now detect potential bullying, stalking, and more to prevent problems before they happen.”
The app also has a chat feature to enable dispatchers or other individuals monitoring the district to communicate with the person reporting an incident in real-time.
“Google Cloud helped make this app one of a kind. We have a proof of concept that many school districts will view as a necessity to keep their students and faculty members safe,” says John.
“Together with Google Cloud and Now IMS, we are reshaping our own approach to communications and security. It could act as a compelling use case for other districts across the U.S.”
—Angelique Myers, Public Information Officer, Fort Bend ISDUshering in a new era of school safety
With the app in place, Fort Bend ISD hopes to serve as an example for other school districts wanting to improve communication, safety, and security.
“The app can also be used for more than what we initially imagined, such as letting parents know about school cancellations or events,” says Angelique. “Together with Google Cloud and Now IMS, we are reshaping our own approach to communications and security. It could act as a compelling use case for other districts across the U.S.”
Now IMS continues to monitor the app and intends to help Fort Bend ISD add more enhanced features that will make the district an even safer and more collaborative environment for students, teachers, and other members of the community.
“As we generate and capture more data and use powerful analytics capabilities in Google Cloud, we can further strengthen safety and security at Fort Bend ISD. Ultimately, we hope that other districts adopt similar practices because gaining insights across activities is even more critical at large districts.”
—John Rodkey, co-founder, Now IMSAmid the COVID-19 pandemic, the district has discussed integrating mental health resources and the option to address coronavirus-related questions for follow-up from nursing personnel.
“As we generate and capture more data and use powerful analytics capabilities in Google Cloud, we can further strengthen safety and security at Fort Bend ISD,” says John. “Ultimately, we hope that other districts adopt similar practices because gaining insights across activities is even more critical at large districts.”
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Fort Bend ISD
Fort Bend Independent School District serves 78,500 students in 80 schools in Texas, making it one of the largest districts in the state.
About Now IMS
Now IMS offers intelligent management services for safety, communications, and other activities across industries, including education and professional sports.