Dedicated Categories for Drugs and Weapons Allow More Control on Review and Escalation of Alerts 

AUSTIN, Texas—January 11, 2024—Lightspeed Systems®, the edtech market leader in digital safety, security, and equity solutions, announced today the introduction of Spanish language alerting capabilities and additional weapons and drugs categories to Lightspeed Alert™, enabling districts to better identify students in crisis, empowering early intervention and more effective support.  

“The expanded language capabilities of Lightspeed Alert, trained in the native language, are another step forward for districts to proactively protect student well-being,” said Brook McShane Bock, Chief Product Officer for Lightspeed Systems. “Lightspeed Alert’s models are trained in Spanish, so they understand the context, nature of the text, and its meaning, rather than relying on a translated version of it and then making an assessment. Therefore, it allows for early and accurate identification of more at-risk students and empowers school districts to proactively intervene before situations become more critical.” 

Lightspeed Alert Evaluates Early Warning Signs and Identifies At-Risk Students 

Lightspeed Alert monitors and analyzes online activity for signals of potential self-harm, bullying, and violence, allowing for the proactive identification of at-risk students. “As students increasingly confide in and interact through school-issued devices, Lightspeed Alert identifies early warning signs, helping school staff identify students in need of support, who might otherwise go unseen or unheard,” added Bock.  

Lightspeed Alert provides the most comprehensive coverage in the market, and powerful machine-learning algorithms classify flagged interactions as either a Low, Medium, or High concern. School district administrators establish which level alerts they would like to monitor, including Self-Harm, Violence, Bullying, Explicit and now, Drugs and Weapons. 

Notifications escalated to administrators include relevant context with recent web searches and site history, enabling staff to quickly understand the situation and take appropriate action. Additionally, with Lightspeed Alert, 24x7x365 review of urgent situations by a highly trained, in-house team of experienced safety professionals augments district resources. All Spanish alerts are translated in the product for review by safety specialists.  

“By empowering staff to focus their limited resources on early intervention, Lightspeed Alert enables schools to take a proactive approach to student safety,” continued Bock. “As Spanish is the native first language for fifteen percent of K-12 students in the United States, Lightspeed Alert now expands its protective features, and the new Weapon and Drug categories provide more granular data to the student support staff at school districts, allowing them to easier prioritize and proactively respond.” 

For more information on Lightspeed Alert, please visit https://www.lightspeedsystems.com/products/lightspeed-alert/.  

About Lightspeed Systems  

Lightspeed Systems is dedicated to providing K–12 districts with time-saving solutions to create safe, secure, and equitable education, so they focus where it matters most—students and learning. Lightspeed Systems provides cloud-managed solutions: Security & Compliance, Safety & Wellness and Engagement & Impact, purpose-built for school networks and devices. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Lightspeed Systems serves more than 20 million students using 11 million devices in 28,000 schools throughout 42 countries. To learn more, visit www.lightspeedsystems.com.   

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Media Contact: 

Ray Hartjen 

Lightspeed Systems 

[email protected] 

(512) 439-3995