Prevention
Creating a safe and orderly learning environment
should not be new to any school and district. Identifying
students (or in some cases staff) who may pose a danger
to themselves or to others is sometimes called “threat
assessment.” The U.S. Department of Education and
U.S. Secret Service recently released a guide, Threat
Assessments in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening
Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates that may
be useful in working through the threat assessment
process. The results of a threat assessment may guide
prevention efforts, which may help avoid a crisis.
Many schools have curricula and programs aimed at
preventing children and youth from initiating harmful
behaviors. Social problem-solving or life skills programs,
anti-bullying programs, and school-wide discipline
efforts are common across the nation as a means of
helping reduce violent behavior. The staff in charge
of prevention in a school (counselors, teachers, health
professionals, administrators) should be part of the
crisis planning team. Information on effective and
promising prevention programs is on the Office of Safe
and Drug-Free Schools Web site.
Action Steps
Know the school building.
Assess potential hazards on campus. Conduct regular safety audits of the physical plant. Be sure to include driveways, parking lots, playgrounds, outside structures, and fencing. A safety audit should be part of normal operations. This information should feed into mitigation planning.
Know the community.
Mitigation requires assessment of local threats. Work with the local emergency management director to assess surrounding hazards. This includes the identification and assessment of the probability of natural disasters (tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes) and industrial and chemical accidents (water contamination or fuel spills). Locate major transportation routes and installations. For example, is the school on a flight path or near an airport? Is it near a railroad track that trains use to transport hazardous materials? Also address the potential hazards related to terrorism.
Schools and districts should be active partners in community- wide risk assessment and mitigation planning. To help agencies work together, they may want to develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU), that outlines each agency’s responsibility.
Bring together regional, local, and school leaders, among others.
Given that mitigation/prevention are
community activities, leadership and support of mitigation
and prevention activities are necessary to ensure
that the right people are at the planning table. Again,
leadership begins at the top. Schools and districts will
face an uphill battle if state and local governments are
not supportive of their mitigation efforts.
Make regular school safety and security efforts part of mitigation/prevention practices.
Consult the comprehensive school safety plan and its needs assessment activities to identify what types of incidents are common in the school.
Establish clear lines of communication.
Because mitigation and prevention planning requires agencies and organizations to work together and share information, communication among stakeholders is critical. In addition to communications within the planning team, outside communications with families and the larger community are important to convey a visible message that schools and local governments are working together to ensure public safety. Press releases from the governor and chief state school officer that discuss the importance of crisis planning can help open the channels of communication with the public.