Photo by Savannah Schmidt
Jason Routson holds up the Circool app on his phone, showcasing its ability to keep school events secure.
The idea for the school safety solution Circool wasn’t born in a tech lab or a boardroom. It started with Jason Routson, a Trussville native and concerned parent.
In a crowded elementary school gym in 2018, Routson noticed a glaring security flaw. Each week, parents gathered to watch students sing, hear announcements and build community. But something about the setup alarmed Routson: The school’s doors were wide open.
"Anybody could just walk in," he said. "On two different occasions, we had an individual blend in with the crowd, walk right into the gym and access our school. Obviously, that made the parents super nervous."
Photo by Savannah Schmidt
Magnolia Elementary School utilizes Circle, the new safety app, to check visitors into a choir concert on Nov. 7, 2024.
The school's quick fix — having parents sign in on paper — only created long lines and offered "zero security," according to Routson. With 25 years of experience in software, he started researching existing tech solutions but found nothing designed specifically for K-12 schools. So, he decided to build one himself.
Routson, who studied programming at Auburn University, envisioned a simple system for schools to manage visitors on an everyday basis, handle large events and streamline a checkout system in the event of a crisis.
He began the 18-month development process while living in Atlanta but moved to Homewood in 2021, which is when Circool really began to take off. Now working from Birmingham’s creative hub, Innovation Depot, his entire team — from development to support — is Alabama-based.
“What Innovation Depot provides Alabama startups is invaluable,” Routson said. “It's a community of entrepreneurs who share in the unique challenges of building a business and truly support each other. The Innovation Depot community is truly transforming Birmingham into a tech hub as strong as any.”
Throughout the development process, Routson and his team involved school staff to ensure a school-centered perspective.
“Every idea developed within Circool has been workshopped by someone in education.”
Their advisory board includes school administrators who weigh in on every aspect. With Routson’s added insight from the software and parent side, Circool has become a standout solution, which is still expanding to address additional school security issues.
Schools today face a balancing act between providing quality education and ensuring student safety.
As Routson said, “The school really just wants to focus on educating the kids. They want to teach, and they don’t want to have to worry about security. But that’s just not the world that we live in. We’re there just to bridge that gap and to make it incredibly simple for the schools to run and incredibly simple for the parents.”
Routson noted that a Circool profile takes less than 60 seconds to set up and provides users with a unique QR code and visitor badge on their mobile device.
“Parents really appreciate the extra steps that these schools are taking to make sure that the kids are safe, inside the school and outside the school,” Routson said.
Circool is gaining traction, having recently secured a partnership with Trussville City Schools, along with nearly
Photo by Savannah Schmidt
Magnolia Elementary School utilizes Circle, the new safety app, to check visitors into a choir concert on Nov. 7, 2024.
100 other schools across Alabama. But for Routson, this is just the beginning of his mission to make schools safer. The goal is to provide schools with a single solution for managing everyone who enters or exits the building.
“We’re starting in Alabama, then expanding across the Southeast and eventually nationwide,” Routson said.
Dr. Patrick Martin, the superintendent of Trussville City Schools, emphasized the importance of these safety efforts.
“One of the charges that I received as superintendent when I was hired was to work with our team to increase our efforts for safety and security. The Circool products support us with this effort.”
As of January, the Trussville City School system has fully integrated the Circool platform.
“Trussville City Schools community members will start to see, if they have not already, other safety enhancements at our schools over the course of this spring and moving into the summer months,” Martin said. “Educating the students of Trussville is our top priority, but right there with that priority is assuring parents and family members that when they drop their students off at school in the morning, that throughout the day and into the afternoon, they are safe and secure.”
