The Evolving Role of the Technology Director in School Safety

Key insights from Marshall Singer's recent appearance on the ATLIS "Talking Technology" podcast

There's a version of the technology director role that most people still picture: the person who keeps the Wi-Fi running, manages device refreshes, and fields help desk tickets. That version of the job still exists. But in independent schools today, it tells less and less of the full story.

Safety responsibilities have quietly crept into the technology director's role in ways that weren't always easy to predict, and for many, the scope of that shift has been surprising. That was front and center in a recent episode of ATLIS's Talking Technology podcast featuring Ruvna co-founder and COO Marshall Singer. The episode, hosted by ATLIS interim CEO Peter Frank alongside ATLIS community members Bill Stites, Director of Technology at Montclair Kimberley Academy, and Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems and Academic Technology at Saint Christopher's School, both Ruvna clients, covered a lot of ground, from the changing scope of the technology director's role to AI, data integration, and what real-time student accountability actually requires.

Safety Has Become a Technology Problem

The hosts didn't have to convince anyone in the room that the role had changed — the question was why, and what to do about it.

Marshall framed it as a natural extension of work technology directors were already doing. "It's just a really natural outgrowth of information security," he noted. "The technology director has always been thinking about security. It just previously was information security, digital security. How are we going to keep our data protected? How are we going to keep our students safe online?"

As schools have grown more digitally enabled, that question has expanded outward — into physical safety systems, emergency response platforms, access control, and the data flows that connect them all. Hiram Cuevas offered a grounding example from Saint Christopher's School, where his office now shares a suite with the director of security. What might have seemed like an unusual pairing a decade ago has become, in his words, "a wonderful symbiosis of these two departments."

Bill Stites illustrated the stakes plainly, describing a lockdown drill at Montclair Kimberley Academy where teachers were emailing attendance to a shared inbox to confirm their students were accounted for, with no real-time cross-reference and no system to verify accuracy under pressure.

"When we took that step to bring in Ruvna to work with on this," he said, "that real-time tracking and that integration between the platform and our SIS gave us real-time data as far as knowing who was in the space."

 Why Campus Safety Depends on More Than Attendance Records

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"One of the most clarifying moments in the conversation was a distinction that sounds simple but carries real operational weight for technology directors: attendance and location are two different data points, and most schools are only set up to capture one of them well.

As Marshall put it, the SIS is built to answer the question "did they learn?" It is not built to answer "where the heck are they right now, and what does that mean?" Attendance records whether a student was present in class at a given moment. Location tells you where they are throughout the rest of the day, at the nurse's office, checked out for a senior privilege, on a field trip, or somewhere in between.

Bridging that gap has increasingly fallen to technology directors, because it's fundamentally a data and systems problem. A student marked present in second period may be in the health center thirty minutes later. During an emergency, that distinction isn't an edge case. It's the whole question. And without a platform that tracks real-time campus status throughout the day, the people responsible for answering it are left without the tools to do so.

"From before the first bell to after the last class ends, where are you and what does that mean?" Marshall said. "Whether that's going on a pass, whether that's going to a field trip, whether that's during an emergency, how we can leverage capacities to make this process a lot easier."

Ruvna's Attendance and Accountability products work together to close that gap, giving staff a single, real-time view of who is on campus, where they are, and what their status means, without placing the entire burden on teachers or administrators working across disconnected systems.

You're Also Managing the Vendor Ecosystem

As safety has moved into the technology director's domain, so has the responsibility of managing the platforms that support it, and that ecosystem is often more fragmented than it needs to be.

Marshall drew a direct line between legacy vendor behavior and the operational challenges technology directors inherit today: systems locked to proprietary hardware, integrations that require going through a corporate queue, and platforms that make it difficult to get a complete picture from a single interface. "When we look at legacy systems, the legacy ways people looked at it was always about getting schools locked in," he said. "What you should be looking for is interoperability, but also flexibility."

Ruvna's approach to this is built around open infrastructure. Rather than building point-to-point integrations with individual platforms, Ruvna's webhook system allows schools to connect external tools as their needs evolve, without having to rebuild from scratch each time. The goal, as Marshall described it, is a "hub and spoke" model where every point integrates, and where technology directors aren't inheriting a stack they'll be untangling for the next decade.

Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign

Since technology directors are often at the table when safety platforms are being evaluated, Marshall offered three questions he thinks schools should ask vendors more often than they do.

First, ask to speak with an engineer. If a vendor won't connect you with someone actually involved in building the product, that's worth noting. It may signal that the relationship won't go deep enough to actually solve your school's specific problems. 

Second, go beyond the vendor-provided references. Ask your own network who's using what and what their honest experience has been. The people you already trust will give you a more complete picture.

Third, ask for a specific walkthrough of what success looks like with their product, including where the common pitfalls are and what the implementation process actually requires of your team.

For technology directors navigating this expanded role, the platform decisions you make today shape how your school responds tomorrow. These questions help ensure the people on the other side of the table understand that as well as you do.

The Role Has Changed. The Work Continues.

The shift is already underway. Technology directors across independent schools are stepping into safety leadership not because it was handed to them, but because the problems demand someone who understands data, systems, and how they fail. The schools that recognize that — and build accordingly — will be better prepared for whatever comes next.

The conversation also covered AI's role in school safety and the nuanced difference between location tracking and attendance — both worth hearing in full. Listen to the complete episode on the ATLIS Talking Technology podcast.

See how Ruvna's unified platform can support your school's safety operations. Schedule a demo today.