Preparedness

fireman Crises have the potential to affect every student and staff member in a school building. Despite everyone’s best efforts at crisis prevention, it is a certainty that crises will occur in schools. Good planning will facilitate a rapid, coordinated, effective response when a crisis occurs. Being well prepared involves an investment of time and resources—but the potential to reduce injury and save lives is well worth the effort.

Start by identifying who should be involved in developing the crisis plan. Include training and drills. Delegating responsibilities and breaking the process down into manageable steps will help planners develop the plan.

During this process, create working relationships with emergency responders. It is important to learn how these organizations function and how you will work with each other during a crisis. Take time to learn the
vocabulary, command structure, and culture of these groups. Some districts have found it useful to sign MOUs with these agencies that specify expectations, including roles and responsibilities.

It is essential to work with city and county emergency planners. You need to know the kinds of support municipalities can provide during a crisis, as well as any plans the city has for schools during a crisis. For example, city
and county planners may plan to use schools as an emergency shelter, a supply depot, or even a morgue. Reviewing this information in advance will help you quickly integrate resources. Participating in local emergency
planning gives school and district administrators insight into all the problems they might face in the event of a community-wide crisis and will help school efforts.

Consider existing efforts. Before jumping in to develop your crisis plan, investigate existing plans (such as those of the district and local government). How do other agencies’ plans integrate with the school’s? Are there conflicts? Does the comprehensive school safety plan include a crisis plan? What information from the district’s crisis plan can be used in the school’s crisis plan?

If the school recently completed a crisis plan, efforts may be limited to revising the plan in response to environmental, staff, and student changes:

Has the building been renovated or is it currently under renovation?
Is the list of staff current?
Have there been changes in the student population?
Have other hazards revealed themselves?

Define roles and responsibilities. How will the school operate during a crisis? Define what should happen, when, and at whose direction—that is, create an organizational system. This should involve many of the school staff—important tasks will be neglected if one person is responsible for more than one function. School staff should be assigned to the following roles:

School commander
Liaison to emergency responders
Student caregivers
Security officers
Medical staff
Spokesperson

Planning Process

During the planning process, both individuals and backups should be assigned to fill these roles. If the district has not already appointed a public information officer, or PIO, it should to do so right away. Some large school districts have staff dedicated solely to this function. Many smaller districts use the superintendent, school security officers, or a school principal as their PIO.

Work with law enforcement officers and emergency responders to identify crises that require an outside agency to manage the scene (fire, bomb threat, hostage situations). Learn what roles these outsiders will play,
what responsibilities they will take on, and how they will interact with school staff. Especially important is determining who will communicate with families and the community during an incident.

Many schools and emergency responders use the Incident Command System, or ICS, to manage incidents. ICS provides a structured way for delegating responsibilities among school officials and all emergency responders during crisis response. An ICS and/or other management
plan needs to be created with all emergency responders and school officials before a crisis occurs.

Communication

Develop methods for communicating with the staff, students, families, and the media. Address how the school will communicate with all of the individuals who are directly or indirectly involved in the crisis. One of the first steps in planning for communication is to develop a mechanism to notify students and staff that an incident is occurring and to instruct them
on what to do. It is critical that schools and emergency responders use the same definitions for the same terms. Don’t create more confusion because terms do not mean the same to everyone involved in responding to a crisis.

It is important to determine how to convey information to staff and students by using codes for evacuation and lockdown, or simply by stating the facts. FEMA recommends simply using plain language rather than codes. If students are evacuated from the school building, will staff use cell phones, radios, intercoms, or runners to get information to the staff supervising them? Be sure to discuss the safest means of communication with law enforcement and emergency responders. For example, some electronic devices can trigger bombs.

Plan how to communicate with families, community members, and the media. Consider writing template letters and press releases in advance so staff will not have to compose them during the confusion and chaos of the
event. It’s easier to tweak smaller changes than to begin from scratch.

Often the media can be very helpful in providing information to families and others in the community. Be sure to work with local media before a crisis occurs to help them understand school needs during an incident.

Equipment & Supplies

Obtain necessary equipment and supplies. Provide staff with the necessary equipment to respond to a crisis. Consider whether there are enough master keys for emergency responders so that they have complete access to the school. Get the phones or radios necessary for communication. Ask for contact information for families. Maintain a cache of first aid supplies. What about food and water for students and staff during the incident?

Prepare response kits for secretaries, nurses, and teachers so they have easy access to the supplies. For example, a nurse’s kit might include student and emergency medicines (“anaphylaxis kits,” which may require physician’s orders, for use in breathing emergencies such as severe, sudden allergic reactions), as well as first aid supplies. A teacher’s kit might include a crisis management reference guide, as well as an updated student roster.

Prepare for immediate response. When a crisis occurs, quickly determine whether students and staff need to be evacuated from the building, returned to the building, or locked down in the building. Plan action
steps for each of these scenarios.

Evacuation

Evacuation requires all students and staff to leave the building. While evacuating to the school’s field makes sense for a fire drill that only lasts a few minutes, it may not be an appropriate location for a longer period of time. The evacuation plan should include backup buildings to serve as emergency shelters, such as nearby community centers, religious institutions, businesses, or other schools. Agreements for using these spaces should be negotiated or reconfirmed prior to the beginning of each
school year. Evacuation plans should include contingencies for weather conditions such as rain, snow, and extreme cold and heat. While most students will be able to walk to a nearby community center, students with disabilities may have more restricted mobility. Your plan should include transportation options for these students.

If an incident occurs while students are outside, you will need to return them to the building quickly. This is a reverse evacuation. Once staff and students are safely in the building, you may find the situation calls for a
lockdown.

Lockdowns

Lockdowns are called for when a crisis occurs outside of the school and an evacuation would be dangerous. A lockdown may also be called for when there is a crisis inside and movement within the school will put students in jeopardy. All exterior doors are locked and students and staff stay in their classrooms. Windows may need to be covered. Exhibit 3.1 illustrates the steps in determining which action is most appropriate for each situation.

Shelter-in-Place

Shelter-in-place is used when there is not time to evacuate or when it may be harmful to leave the building. Shelter-in-place is commonly used during hazardous material spills. Students and staff are held in the building and windows and doors are sealed. There can be limited movement within the building.

Maps and Facility Information

Create maps and facilities information. In a crisis, emergency responders need to know the location of everything in a school. Create site maps that include information about classrooms, hallways, and stairwells, the location of utility shut-offs, and potential staging sites. Emergency responders need copies of this information in advance. During a crisis designate locations— staging sites—for emergency responders to organize, for medical personnel to treat the injured, for the public
information officer to brief the media, and for families to be reunited with their children. Student reunification sites should be as far away from the media staging area as possible. Law enforcement will help determine the
plans needed to facilitate access of emergency responders and to restrict access of well-wishers and the curious.

Student Release Procedures

Develop accountability and student release procedures. As soon as a crisis is recognized, account for all students, staff, and visitors. Emergency responders treat a situation very differently when people are missing.
For example, when a bomb threat occurs, the stakes are substantially higher if firefighters do not know whether students are in the school when they are trying to locate and disarm a bomb. Be sure to inform families of release procedures before a crisis occurs. In many crises, families have flocked to schools wanting to collect their children immediately. A method should be in place for tracking student release and ensuring that students are only released to authorized individuals.

Practice

Practice. Preparedness includes emergency drills and crisis exercises for staff, students, and emergency responders. Many schools have found tabletop exercises very useful in practicing and testing the procedures
specified in their crisis plan. Tabletop exercises involve school staff and emergency responders sitting around a table discussing the steps they would take to respond to a crisis. Often, training and drills identify issues that need to be addressed in the crisis plan and problems with plans for communication and response. Teachers also need training in how to manage students during a crisis, especially those experiencing panic reactions. Careful consideration of these issues will improve your crisis plan and better prepare you to respond to an actual crisis.

Liability Issues

Address liability issues. Consideration of liability issues is necessary before crisis planning can be completed and may protect you and your staff from a lawsuit. Situations where there is a foreseeable danger can
hold liability if the school does not make every reasonable effort to intervene or remediate the situation. A careful assessment of the hazards faced by the school is critical.