Crisis and Emergency Planning for Schools

The federal departments of Education and Homeland Security emphasize strategy and comprehensiveness in school crisis and emergency planning. This multi-hazards approach means that activities in the preparation stage are identifiable, actionable, and repeatable, regardless of type of emergency.* The response, recovery, and mitigation stages will be based upon local conditions, circumstances, and resources.

As an illustration, Dawn Warehime of FEMA asks this question: If school meals are prepared at a facility that is off campus and then delivered to the school just-in-time for meals, what does this mean for sheltering-in-place when there is no food warehouse on campus? [In many schools, the annual food drive serves multiple purposes.]

Similarly, if the school nurse works in rotation among three schools in the district, what is a school response in the event of the same sheltering when there is no health professional on campus? Consequently, the crisis and emergency plan – and the planning process – for the school must be both strategic (to address short- and long-term circumstances and various scenarios) and comprehensive (to include students, school staff, school district staff, families, and first-responders, among others).

Federal resources:

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. (2003, May). Practical information on crisis planning: A guide for schools and communities. Washington, DC: Author.
Order at U.S. Department of Education Online Ordering System, http://www.edpubs.org/webstore/Content/search.asp – Enter “EQ 0141P” in the Publication ID field. Also, please see http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/emergencyplan/index.html.

FEMA Emergency Management Institute, Emmitsburg, Maryland, Multi-Hazard Emergency Planning for Schools Train-The-Trainer (E362). Register at http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/emiSchool/schoolsafety1.asp
Recently announced training dates:
March 6–9, 2006
April 24–27, 2006
June 12–15, 2006
July 24–27, 2006

FEMA Independent Study Program: IS-362 Multi-Hazard Emergency Planning for Schools http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is362.asp

Some definitions:

Strategic planning is “the process by which an organization envisions its future and develops strategies, goals, objectives and action plans to achieve that future” (American Society for Quality, http://www.asq.org). Comprehensive planning is “embracing many things; inclusive; intensive (logic)” in planning (Oxford English Dictionary).**

* The multi-hazards approach also means that school safety planning is aligned with crisis and emergency planning. Alignment refers to the “consistency of plans, processes, information, resource decisions, actions, results, and analysis to support key organization-wide goals” (Baldrige National Quality Program, http://www.quality.nist.gov/Education_Criteria.htm, p. 66 of the PDF version) as it relates to school safety and crisis and emergency planning.

** Generally, effective strategic planners are comprehensive planners in practice, and vice versa, but the job descriptions might be different.

Page Updated: September 28, 2005