5 Simple Steps To Make Your School Safer and More Secure

5 Simple Steps to Take To Make Your School Safer and More Secure

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STEP 1: Instill, and Maintain, a School Preparedness Mindset.  

·         “See Something, Hear Something, Say Something”  campaign that is all inclusive

STEP 2: Form a School Preparedness Committee

STEP 3: Learn About School Preparedness (Free FEMA EMI Online Courses)

STEP 4:  Find, Review, and Refine your School Preparedness Plan

STEP 5: Conduct School Preparedness Drills and grow capability. 

Va Tech Fined $55K for Delayed Notification of a Potential threat on Campus

VA TECH FINED FOR VIOLATING FEDERAL LAW REQUIRING TIMELY NOTIFICATION OF A THREAT TO SCHOOL COMMUNITY.

US Department of Education fined Virginia Tech University for their failure to notify their school community about a potentially ongoing threat to campus safety. On April 16, 2007, when they failed to alert the campus after the discovery of two murdered students at 7:30 am. The 911 call occurred at 7:15 am and the police (Va Tech PD & Blacksburg PD) confirmed the murdered students in a dormitory. Classes start at 8:00 am daily. At 8:52 am, the University President (Stenger) had his office put into a lockdown and off campus PD (Blacksburg PD) placed their public schools into lockdown. Between, 9:05 and 9:15 am the shooter (Seung-Hui Cho) walked into Norton Hall and chained the doors shut. It wasn't until 9:26 am that President Stenger chose to notify the campus by sending out an email to campus staff, faculty, and students about a shooting incident in a dormitory (concerning the 2 murdered students). The campus was not placed in a lockdown nor told that a potential threat and gunmen still existed because they made an assumption that the 7:15 murder was an isolated incident. (In a crisis situation you can never assume away the potential or realization of a threat) At 9:42 am Cho's Norris Hall shooting rampage started and lasted 9 minutes and at the end of the day 33 people were killed.

Points for Consideration:

• Analyzing past and more recent school shootings is key for school leaders and communities to determine how to best prevent, mitigate, respond, and recover from a horrific act of violence.
• If the potential for violence, (let alone if a violent act has occurred) you must make decisions based upon worst case scenario and err on the side of caution.
• President Stenger (ready or not, prepared or not, trained or not) waited entirely too long to put the campus into a lockdown. Two hours after a confirmed double murder on campus did not result in a campus lockdown even after two hours...? Unacceptable. 
• Educational Leaders (Superintendents, University and College Presidents, Principals) need to ensure they have thought through and "done their homework" to prepare for all hazards, especially acts of violence. 
• School Leaders will have to make decisions in a crisis with incomplete information, and if an assumption is made it is in preparing and responding to a worst case scenario vice HOPING everything will work out OR encounter the "paralysis of analysis: by trying to come up with the perfect decision vice a good enough decision that protects LIVES first.  
• School Leaders need to take educate, train, and exercise their organizations and themselves to make good decisions.
• Taking free online courses from FEMA's Emergency Management Institute (EMI) on:
• Courses on: Emergency Management Planning for Schools, Emergency Management Planning for Universities, Active Shooter Response, Workplace Violence, and Incident Command Posts  

Small Plane Crashes Into Arizona High School, Four People Killed

(June 2010)  A small Cessna plane crashed into Round Valley High School in Eager, a small eastern Arizona town. The Cessna plane circled the area two or three times before it suddenly nosedived into the main building at Round Valley High School at about 2 p.m. and exploded. There were no reports of injuries on the ground and the blaze was contained to the main school building. Two hours later, flames were still erupting 20 to 30 feet above the roof of the two-story school. Fortunately, classes were out for the summer so no students or school personnel were injured. The school serves about 500 students in Eager and nearby Springerville and is about 200 miles east of Phoenix.

Four witnesses tried to get into the school building, but the doors were locked. As they were leaving, the plane exploded. Fire crews from nearly a dozen small towns in the region raced to battle the flames which occurred overnight and into the next day. Officials evacuated homes in neighborhoods east and north of the school. Authorities found four bodies in the plane wreckage pending further identification and a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation.

Some Things To Consider:

• Any incident is possible in regards to school preparedness. Who would ever imagine a small plane would crash into your school? Accident? Suicide or Attack? It is important to always ask yourself, "What If ...?" What would you do?
• When wargaming for natural or man-made incidents affecting your school, it is all about preparedness / prevention, NOT PARANOIA. (Al Qaeda attacking your school is considerably less likely than a disgruntled parent coming to take their child from school during a custody battle.)
• How many Fire departments (full time, volunteer, or combination of both) are prepared for a no-notice aviation (small or large plane or helo) crash in a residential area, let alone a school?
• Had that plane crash occurred during a school day, what would the School Evacuation, Mass Casualty, and Student Reunification Plan be????
• How would you conduct student and employee accountability?
• School Facility Recovery Phase: Post Fire Cleanup, School Facility Damage (Fire, Smoke, Water, Structural) Assessment, NSTB Investigation Scene, Insurance Investigation, Possible Crime Scene Site?, Post Incident Facility Safety and Security considerations.
• School COOP (Continuity of Operations):
• Were there summer classes or events scheduled? 
• What school critical functions have been affected by the plane crash?
• What is the level of damage to these school critical functions?
• How and When will these damages be fixed? 
• Will this timeline conflict with the full or partial opening of the school's opening?

RECOVERY PHASE BEGINS AS SOON AS THE RESPONSE PHASE TO THE INCIDENT OCCURS.

School Preparedness Drills and Exercises Video

Here is a school preparedness video titled YES-TV: Emergency Preparedness at Mountian View High School. This is an outstanding video which highlights the school preparedness network (students, school faculty and administration, school district, first responders: police, fire, medical) in action transitioning from static paper-based plans towards dynamic capability based training complete with an assessment at all levels to capture observations, lessons learned, and issues requiring future resolution. This video also touches on the importance of establishing Incident Command Posts (ICP) at all levels and the criticality of communications (assets, training, availability) in order to maintain command and control of an incident at all levels to leverage the capability of the entire school preparedness network.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veazcKC069U