Belton ISD emphasizing importance of Anonymous Alert website

BELTON, Texas (KWTX) - Belton ISD is putting an emphasis on creating more opportunities for students and parents to report suspicious activity.

Years before tragedy struck at Robb Elementary School, increasing safety was already on the minds of Belton ISD. A bond passed set aside $7 million to the safety of their students.

After Uvalde, the district brought in just under 100 community members and opened the floor to new ideas.

From that meeting they were able to pin point two prominent areas they can improve.

The first is making students, staff and parents feel more comfortable sharing suspicious activity. The second area was to revamp the resources for people to relay those concerns.

“Anonymous Alerts can be used by students, parents, community members, and it’s basically a program that people can easily access on our website where if you see something of concern, you say something. It’s reported to groups throughout our school district, so that when we get those alerts and know that there’s something to follow up on at that point. That gives students and parents sometimes the ability to report something without fear of their name being attached to it,” says Belton ISD Superintendent Dr. Matt Smith.

The district has also formed student led safety teams where kids can turn to their peers to report something.

“We brought students’ voices into that,” Smith adds.

How the safety teams work and are structured differ from campus to campus. But the goal is to give students a voice in their campus’s safety measures. An example of the ideas generated from the safety committees include student-created PSAs.

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