Gaggle Partners with Clayton County Public Schools to Manage Student Safety on School-Provided Technology and Collaboration Platforms

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (Feb. 12, 2020) – Gaggle, the pioneer in helping K-12 districts manage student safety on school-provided technology, today announced that Georgia’s fifth-largest school district is implementing its student safety technology. Clayton County Public Schools (CCPS) in Jonesboro, Ga., is comprised of 37 elementary, 14 middle, and 11 high schools, and will use the technology to protect its students and ensure their safety and well-being in digital learning spaces.

Since 1999, Gaggle has helped districts across the country protect students, avoid tragedies, save lives and protect against district liability by monitoring digital spaces and responding to safety issues and threats. The Gaggle safety solution uses a robust combination of both artificial intelligence and trained safety experts to provide real-time analysis and review of students’ use of online collaboration platforms, such as Google’s G Suite for Education, Microsoft Office 365 and Canvas while proactively identifying and supporting students who are personally struggling; and creating a safer school environment by building a culture for improved digital citizenship.

“Here in Clayton County – we are committed to meeting the physical, emotional, and social needs of our 54,000 students. Each and every student needs all of the academic guidance that we can provide, but they also need a high level of support to ensure that they are okay mentally, emotionally, and socially and with the addition of Gaggle, we now have an additional resource to assist with keeping our students safe,” said Rod Smith, chief of technology at CCPS.

Gaggle proactively assists districts 24/7 in the prevention of harmful situations. An in-house team of trained safety professionals with backgrounds in law enforcement, psychology, social work, suicide prevention and crisis management evaluate flagged content for false positives, categorizes incidents and determines their severity. The team then alerts district personnel to policy violations, inappropriate content, critical mental health issues and imminent danger to students. Over the past 20 years, Gaggle has scanned more than 13 billion pieces of student content, flagging over 151 million items for review by its team of safety experts who look for signs of self-harm and depression, thoughts of suicide, substance abuse, cyberbullying and credible threats of violence against others.

“We live in an era where K-12 districts can’t just think about the physical security of their students and staff; they also have to worry about all aspects of security,” said Gaggle CEO, Jeff Patterson. “We applaud Clayton County schools in choosing to proactively take action to protect their students from harming themselves or others—before a disaster happens.”

About Gaggle|www.gaggle.net

Since 1999, Gaggle has been the leader in helping K-12 districts manage student safety on school-provided technology. Using a robust combination of both artificial intelligence and trained safety experts, the safety solution proactively assists districts 24/7/365 in the prevention of student suicide, bullying, inappropriate behaviors, school violence, and other harmful situations. Most importantly, Gaggle continues to help hundreds of districts avoid tragedies and save lives, while also protecting their liability. In the 2018-19 academic year, Gaggle has helped districts save the lives of more than 700 students who were planning or actually attempting suicide. For more information, visit www.gaggle.net and follow Gaggle on Twitter at @Gaggle_K12.