About the Safe School Alerts System
The Safe School Alerts System provides school closure and reopening information for schools in greater Harris County. Media, emergency management officials and the education and at-large community benefit from the alerts.
Created in 2009 by Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) and the Center for Safe and Secure Schools (Center), www.safeschoolalerts.org utilizes the Public Information Emergency Response System (PIER).
Member districts use the School Alerts System as the official site to post emergency district alerts. Postings are provided by each individual school district. The system is not meant to replace existing notification systems. Instead, it compliments and boosts redundant communications plans.
The Safe School Alerts PIER project is a highly reliable, Web-based community emergency management system supported with a nationwide base of servers. PIER uses government agency security standards. Funding is provided via a grant from the United States Department of Homeland Security. Current users of PIER include the U.S. Coast Guard, Marathon Oil, Fort Bend County and the University of Houston
About Harris County
Harris County encompasses 2,000 square miles in Texas and is the third most populous county in the U.S. with just over 3.9 million people. Thirty-four municipalities operate within the county. The largest is the City of Houston, the fourth most populated city in the nation.
Twenty-six school districts serve the citizens of Harris County. Over 900,000 students are served on 900 campuses throughout the county. About 5,000 buses are utilized daily to transport students.
The Need for School Alerts System
The need is critical for a Web-based, easy-to-use system to serve school districts as an official site for emergency district alerts.
Harris County is vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding, most recently having to prepare for, respond to and recover from Tropical Storm Allison and hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike.
Additionally, the county possesses numerous assets vulnerable to terrorism: energy (nuclear power, oil/natural gas refineries, pipelines); a major seaport and international airports; petrochemical production; aerospace complex; computer manufacturing/software; media; and telecommunications. Also, we have the Texas Medical Center, one of the largest in the world; numerous universities, colleges and graduate schools; and hundreds of miles of rail lines.
