MADERA, Calif. - Inside a trailer at Matilda Torres High School, you might think you were inside a real 911 dispatch center.
Computer monitors glow, keyboards click, headsets are on, and voices overlap.
Jacqueline Gutierrez just got off a call.
“It was like a woman calling because her brother got stabbed in the stomach,” Gutierrez recalls. “And she was just like, yelling and crying, like, your nerves get all, like, jittered up.”
This wasn’t a real call, and she isn’t a professional. She’s actually a high school senior studying criminology, and she’s inside the state’s first mobile 911 dispatch training center.
Even though the calls are simulated and powered by artificial intelligence, Gutierrez says they feel real the moment she puts on her headset.
“It did feel really real, like in the adrenaline, your hands are shaking,” Gutierrez said. “You could hear gunshots going off in the background, it gets your nerves up. But you have to remind yourself to calm down, because you have to be calm in that situation, because you're the one helping the person.”
The Fresno County Superintendent of Schools recently unveiled the trailer. It’s for students in a career technical education program, and it travels to high school campuses across the Valley that offer criminal justice courses. It will stay at Matilda Torres for two weeks, then it moves on to schools in Clovis, Caruthers, Mendota, and other towns in Fresno and Madera counties – and it will return next year to make the same rounds once again.
The goal is simple: give students real-world training early, and prepare them for careers in public safety.
Once students complete 20 hours in the trailer, they also earn college credits.
Reyna Martinez is a dispatch supervisor with the Fresno County Sheriff's Office. She helps run the simulations, and she says the intensity of the training is intentional.
“We can choose the voice, how the voice sounds like, if they're panicked, if they're polite, if they're whispering, if they're yelling,” Martinez said. “We can also create background noises, things like that, to make it as realistic as possible.”
Students answer the phone, ask questions, and gather all the critical details – just like in a real emergency.
“I try to base it on actual calls that we have, the type of scenario,” Martinez said. “Other things will obviously be changed for them and then made so that it is appropriate for high school students.”
When the call ends, an AI tool scores their performance based on how well they handled the emergency.
This kind of training is becoming increasingly important.
Across the country, dispatch centers are struggling to find workers. In 2022, a study by the federal government estimated that nearly a third of emergency centers reported high vacancy rates.
Martinez says that means fewer people answering calls when someone dials 911.
“There is definitely a shortage in most dispatch centers, but when we have high school students that might be interested in it, hopefully that can help that,” Martinez said.
This classroom is one of only two of its kind in the entire country. The other is in Las Vegas.
Simon Palacios teaches the criminal justice course currently using the trailer in Madera. He says dispatch is a promising career path.
“There's just hundreds, if not thousands of dispatching opportunities across the United States,” Palacios said.
He says experiences like this help students understand what these jobs actually require, like staying calm under pressure.
“Anytime the educational system brings in some real-life experiences, it really helps the students engage what is needed to have an understanding of what it's like in the real world,” Palacios said.
Senior Noah Cosentino says this program has changed the way he sees the profession.
“This is the first time I've experienced anything like this firsthand,” Cosentino said. “So it really opened my eyes even more to how stressful it is to be a dispatcher.”
He has enlisted in the Coast Guard for the next six years. Afterwards, he hopes to become a sheriff deputy.
“This is honestly the best class to give me the most experience and knowledge in this field, in the field of law enforcement,” Cosentino said.
