Winton Woods Extends Emergency Lockdown Hardware to Every Campus

Winton Woods City Schools has finished installing SafeDefend emergency lockdown boxes across every campus in the district, including the Winton Woods Early Childhood Central Campus, where staff completed training on the equipment.

The district first put the system in place in 2021 and has since expanded coverage to all of its schools. SafeDefend, a Kansas-based company, was started by a former educator after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The hardware centers on wall-mounted boxes that open with a fingerprint touch. Activation triggers a campus-wide alarm, alerts local law enforcement, and unlocks the supplies stored inside. Each box holds gel pepper spray, a window-breaking baton, a trauma kit, a safety vest, flex cuffs, a high-intensity strobe flashlight, and a whistle.

"The concept is prepare, notify and protect," said Dan Cole of SafeDefend. "We don't ever ask staff to go into the hallway to take a bad guy on. This is just simply to give them peace of mind while they're waiting for help." Cole said access to tools and training in the first minutes of a crisis limits confusion.

Superintendent Steve Denny said the district's central task remains instruction, and that securing students supports that task. "That's the vision is to have an equal amount of protection across the entire district," Denny said.

The expansion drew on state grant dollars and local funds. The boxes carry battery backups to work through power outages and will be folded into routine safety drills. Winton Woods is the first district in the Cincinnati area to install the technology, which now operates in schools across 11 states.