The Wichita Police Department is looking to expand the reach of its Real Time Information Center into Wichita schools, a move police say could save lives during a school shooting or other critical incident.

But the plan also has raised alarms for privacy advocates who worry about the government’s ever-expanding surveillance network, particularly the Wichita Police Department’s Arctic program that launched in September 2025.

Arctic, housed inside City Hall, gives officers access to a centralized repository of surveillance systems throughout the city — including Flock license-plate readers, police body cameras and vehicle cameras, private security cameras, gunshot detection technology, aerial drone video equipped with thermal imaging and nearly 300 city-owned surveillance cameras.

Wichita police say the school system would not be surveillance technology. And it would be funded in large part by the federal government. The City Council will decide Tuesday whether to apply for the funding.

Wichita police leaders are looking to add “a school safety and public notification technology that interfaces with the WPD Real-Time Information Center and Sedgwick County Emergency Communications” to the mix, according to a staff report in Tuesday’s City Council agenda.

“With this technology, in the event of an active shooter or other critical incident, officers would have real-time access to information inside school buildings,” the report says. “This information would include locations, images, and descriptions of a suspect, allowing for faster, right-sized, more effective response, and reducing the lethality of any critical incident in a school.”

Wichita police and USD 259 would install the technology in all middle schools and high schools as well as alternative education centers.

Sunflower Privacy Alliance, a nonprofit recently formed in response to increasing surveillance concerns, said the vague description of the technology raises questions.

“Protecting kids from an active shooter or other critical incident is a goal everyone shares, including us,” Sunflower spokespeople Blake Branson and Drew Cranmer said in a statement.

“But the agenda item as summarized doesn’t tell the public much about the actual technology being proposed,” the statement says. “It’s unnamed, and the description centers on what it would deliver (real-time locations, images, and descriptions of a suspect inside school buildings) rather than what it is, how it works, what data it captures on ordinary school days, who can access that data and under what circumstances, how long it’s retained, and what oversight or audit mechanisms exist.”

Sunflower said any such technology that gives law enforcement real-time access to what’s going on in classrooms should be subject to heightened scrutiny.

“We’re not reflexively against school safety technology, and we recognize the tragedy this is meant to prevent is real,” the statements says. “But bringing new surveillance infrastructure into schools deserves the same transparency and public scrutiny we’ve been pushing for with Flock, not less, simply because the justification is children’s safety. If anything, the stakes for getting the guardrails right are higher.”

Wichita police Capt. Aaron Moses said in an email that the new tech “is not surveillance technology” and noted that the department applied for the same grant last year. He said the specific technology is not named in the city agenda because it hasn’t been identified at this time and the contract will be awarded through the city’s competitive bidding process.

“It is a technology that would allow teachers to press a hold up alarm type device to notify Sedgwick County 911 of an incident, and it would allow WPD to send mass notifications out to the public/schools if necessary,” Moses said.

Moses said the references to “real-time access” to information, locations, descriptions of suspects and images inside school buildings in the agenda item describe the functionality of the technology.

“The technology we’re looking at allows people in the building to send photos through the platform,” Moses said. “It also allows us to see locations of specific ‘hold up’ alarms if they’re activated, so we know exactly where the emergency is occurring.”

The new tech would not grant access to the district’s surveillance camera feeds to be included in the Real Time Information Center, Moses said. It would require a triggering event to alert the Arctic center.

“WPD and USD 259 do not have any data sharing agreement/an agreement for WPD to access camera feeds at schools,” Moses said in his statement.

“These technologies’ function based off the initial action from the school employee,” Moses said. “This means we cannot access any information until the system is activated. Most of the vendors allow for two-way communication, only after the system is activated by the school employee.”

The department plans to apply for grant funding through the U.S. Department of Justice’s School Violence Prevention Program, which would provide up to $500,000 over three years beginning Oct. 1. The city would be required to provide matching funds for the technology equal to 25% of the federal grant, or $125,000.

Moses said leadership of USD 259 has been supportive of the grant application.

As for oversight concerns, Moses said any audit or oversight structure for the technology would be “vendor specific” and would be addressed through the request for proposals process, if the department is ultimately awarded the funding.

Moses said the technology would expand a police presence into some schools that do not have school resource officers.

“We currently only have SROs at Wichita High Schools and alternative schools leaving the majority of schools without a police presence,” Moses said. “WPD used to have SROs in Middle Schools as well, but they were removed due to budget constraints around 2009.”

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