Safety is an Inside Job!

Though most schools will never need them, every school needs to have plans in place for dealing with crises.

Some communities work on the community level to train for crises in realistic exercises that involve police, fire and rescue services. Other schools work with staff and students to develop a campus safety plan and hold drills to practice implementation. Whatever you choose to do, it’s important that the action steps in your plan be well rehearsed with staff and students.

Here are a few questions (but there are many, many more) principals and teachers can ask to see how ready you are for a crisis:

• If someone reports a gun on campus, how will you and your teachers respond? Will the school be locked down?  
• Who will call the police?  What phones can reach outside lines for that purpose?
• Who will take charge if the principal is out when a crisis occurs?
• Do students know the signal for a lock-down? 
• Do students know where to go in their classroom if a lock-down is called for? 
• Do all teachers know how to respond if an evacuation of the school is called?
• What procedures are in place to monitor who enters the school from the outside?
• Are there unsafe areas in the school that need to be better lighted or monitored?

There are many resources available online to help you create safety plans.  We’ve collected some of these for you below:

• The Department of Education provides several resources on crisis planning, terrorism protective measures, and even information on grant opportunities for security planning.

• The National Clearinghouse for Education Facilities offers invaluable resources for building, transforming and renovating safe schools to promote learning.  The Safe Schools Section of their website offers links to articles published in the major media and leading educational journals about how to create safer schools.  You’ll also find many other resources and information on conferences near you. Be sure to also check out their resource list.

• National Association of School Psychologists provides several resources:

• NASP/NEAT Community Crisis Response
• Classroom Killers?  Hallway Hostages? How Schools Can Prevent and Manage School Crises

• Mental Health Matters: Suicide and Sudden Loss: Crisis Management in Schools
• University of Akron: Crisis Management and School Security
• Virginia Youth Violence Project Guidelines for Responding to Threats of Violence (PDF) 

In the News:

• Program focuses on response to school violence (The Citizen's Voice, February 5, 2005)
• CA school requires radio ID tags for students (MSNBC, February 10, 2005)
• School safety concerns cause a buzz (Boston Globe, February 13, 2005)
  

Page Updated: March 17, 2005