Saturday, September 3, 2016
Blog – School SecuritySchool safety preparation tips for back-to-schoolTabletop exercises strengthen school security and emergency preparedness for a crisisStudents choking at school: A different type of school safety concernOnline group “Evacuation Squad” with ties to Russia and Iran claims responsibility for worldwide wave of school bomb threatshttp://www.schoolsecurity.org Fri, 19 Aug 2016 23:23:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.3 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/07/school-safety-preparation-tips-back-school/ http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/07/school-safety-preparation-tips-back-school/#respond Wed, 27 Jul 2016 17:58:34 +0000 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/?p=6657 Back-to-school means it is time for curriculum and scheduling tweaks, faculty meetings, parent communications and many other academic preparations. It also is time to review school security, emergency preparedness, supervision and other school safety fundamentals that should be included in your district and/or building safety to-do lists at the start of each year. A few […]
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]]>Back-to-school means it is time for curriculum and scheduling tweaks, faculty meetings, parent communications and many other academic preparations. It also is time to review school security, emergency preparedness, supervision and other school safety fundamentals that should be included in your district and/or building safety to-do lists at the start of each year.
A few of those safety fundamentals include:
- Complete your annual review and updating of your emergency and crisis plans (guidelines). This is mandated in some states, but is a best practice even if not mandated in your state.
- Include a school safety component in your back-to-school planning. This must be more than ten minutes on your agenda or a passing reminder to teachers to review their written guideline documents. When was a school safety training presented to your whole staff? Who conducted such a training? Were support staff included? How is your district or building addressing the on-going issue of the school-to-prison-pipeline? Are you giving adequate focus to school safety training and planning, not just security hardware? We continue to read news reports that teacher unions and professional associations are demanding more school safety and behavior management training. A school safety leader understands there is a direct correlation between a safe school building and academic achievement.
- Review with all staff your school’s visitor procedures. Today, perhaps more than ever, how people gain access to our school buildings is a high priority area of concern. While technology can enhance our school safety procedures, it cannot be substituted for a reasonably well-trained and highly-alert staff.
- What is your relationship with local law enforcement and what should you — and your staff — expect from police? How is your local law enforcement agency going to respond to events at your building? In light of recent police shootings across this nation, it is important for school leaders to understand that your police agency may have changed procedures since last school year. It is important for school leaders to feel comfortable in asking questions of local law enforcement: Have your local police gone to two officers in each car due to heightened concerns for officer safety? If so, how will that affect response time to your building? Have the officers received additional defensive/officer safety training that will affect response and how they might approach a threat reported at your school? How have they been trained for approaching and handling young children? What issues, concerns, expectations and understandings exist regarding student arrests? Has your School Resource Officer (SRO) received new directions, training and policies that could impact how SROs interact with students and respond to incidents?
It has never been more important to have a great relationship with your local police department. And this doesn’t simply mean the superintendent or principal meet for coffee a couple times a year with the police chief as your sole source of relationship building. Debriefing of incidents, tough conversations on issues and differences of opinion, and more detailed collaborative efforts can be helpful to your overall preventative and preparedness efforts. (You still can have coffee while discussing them!)
While this list is by no means comprehensive, it is meant to stir conversation in your school to provide the best protection for students and staff alike. There is no better time to do so before our children and school staff return to school well-rested and eager to start a new school year.
Be prepared and be safe!
Chuck Hibbert
Consultant to National School Safety and Security Services
Experts You Can Trust!
Visit School Security Blog at: www.schoolsecurity.org/blog
Follow Ken Trump on Twitter @safeschools
Visit and “Like” Our Facebook School Safety News Channel at: www.facebook.com/schoolsafety
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]]>http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/07/school-safety-preparation-tips-back-school/feed/ 0 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/07/tabletop-exercises-strengthen-school-security-emergency-preparedness-crisis/ http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/07/tabletop-exercises-strengthen-school-security-emergency-preparedness-crisis/#respond Wed, 13 Jul 2016 21:39:44 +0000 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/?p=6632 Security and emergency preparedness has been at the forefront as our hometown Cleveland prepares to host next week’s Republican National Convention, just on the heels of an impromptu 1.3 million fan downtown celebration of our NBA Champion Cavaliers basketball victory. The tragic attacks on Dallas police officers last week only heightened our local conversations about […]
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]]>Security and emergency preparedness has been at the forefront as our hometown Cleveland prepares to host next week’s Republican National Convention, just on the heels of an impromptu 1.3 million fan downtown celebration of our NBA Champion Cavaliers basketball victory. The tragic attacks on Dallas police officers last week only heightened our local conversations about security and emergency preparedness as our city, like many others, struggles with racial and community issues around policing.
Joseph Clancy, the Director of the Secret Service, along with Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams and others met yesterday with the media to reassure Clevelanders that law enforcement is prepared. It was particularly striking to see today’s headline story focusing on the Director’s comments that tabletop exercises serve as a foundation for the Secret Service and local police preparation for massive events with heightened national security concerns.
School tabletop exercises offer realistic option for emergency planning
Tabletop exercises provide a simulation of emergency situations in informal, stress-free environments. In the school safety arena tabletop exercise facilitators, who are school safety professionals experienced in managing school emergencies and crisis situations, provide a scenario and series of events to stimulate discussions by participants who assess and resolve unfolding problems based on their existing plans. The school tabletop exercise allows school participants to examine the roles, responsibilities, tasks, and overall logistics associated with managing a similar real-life emergency situation and make subsequent adjustments in their school emergency/crisis plans.
While full scale drills are very educational, they typically are labor and time intensive. Tabletop exercises can provide a less stressful, more time effective method of taking a school’s emergency/crisis planning to the next level.
Full and half-day sessions, often done during school professional development days, allow school leaders to avoid having school emergency / crisis plans collect dust on a shelf. They also help school leaders advance their emergency planning while avoiding the missteps and controversy recently seen in some over-the-top, poorly planned full scale tactical drills.
School tabletop lessons help strengthen security and emergency plans
Tabletop exercises we have facilitated for schools, school districts and their first responders over the past two decades have revealed some common, interesting “lessons learned.” We share a number of those lessons learned on our school tabletop exercise web page that are worth your quick read.
Moving written school emergency plans from paper to practice helps school districts, first responders and their community partners to get feel for whether what they have in writing might actually work in a real emergency. In today’s busy education world, they also represent a reasonable balance between crisis plans collecting dust on a shelf and the very labor and time intensive full scale exercises that at times, when poorly planned and executed, have backfired on school leaders.
Have you prepared your school team with school security and emergency preparedness tabletop exercises?
Ken Trump
National School Safety and Security Services
Experts You Can Trust!
Visit School Security Blog at: www.schoolsecurity.org/blog
Follow Ken on Twitter @safeschools
Visit and “Like” Our Facebook School Safety News Channel at: www.facebook.com/schoolsafety
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]]>http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/07/tabletop-exercises-strengthen-school-security-emergency-preparedness-crisis/feed/ 0 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/05/students-choking-school-different-type-school-safety-concern/ http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/05/students-choking-school-different-type-school-safety-concern/#comments Sun, 15 May 2016 18:22:31 +0000 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/?p=6625 Recently I received a telephone call from an attorney representing a family who had lost a child due to a choking incident at school. These calls always break my heart. And I say “calls” because this is the third such death of a child in which I have been asked to serve as an expert […]
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]]>Recently I received a telephone call from an attorney representing a family who had lost a child due to a choking incident at school. These calls always break my heart. And I say “calls” because this is the third such death of a child in which I have been asked to serve as an expert witness.
These cases are always heartbreaking for everyone involved, particularly the family and the school staff who witnessed and participated in trying to save the children involved. No one can question when school staff respond to these incidents with their best efforts and desire to save the life of the child. Unfortunately, in the cases I have been involved with, the child did not survive.
While each case is unique, there are considerations that I wish to share with schools so that we can perhaps save one life and, one family and one school the heartbreak:
- Recognize that if you have young children and/or special needs children in your environment, someone could choke on food.
- Prepare for such an event and train staff, including support staff, who might encounter a choking child.
- Think about the environments in which we provide food to children. This goes beyond the cafeteria. How about classroom snacks? What about after school programs? What about breakfast in the classroom? Think of different scenarios because these are environments in which children could choke.
- This training should ideally be done annually and be ongoing. It cannot be “one and done.”
- This training should include school administrators who have cafeteria duties or who will be responding to a choking child anywhere in the school.
- The school’s emergency plan should include a response for such emergencies.
- Remember children are not the only ones who choke in the school environment. Prepare for the adult choking as well.
- This type of training could also be an excellent parent outreach program to provide so parents know what to do at home, particularly for our special needs families.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive and each case will have its own unique fact pattern and circumstances. The purpose of this article is to heighten awareness as readers may think of other steps which should be taken.
Let us not lose the lives of any more children in our school environments because we were not aware and prepared.
Chuck Hibbert
Consultant to National School Safety and Security Services
Experts You Can Trust!
Visit School Security Blog at: www.schoolsecurity.org/blog
Follow Ken Trump on Twitter @safeschools
Visit and “Like” Our Facebook School Safety News Channel at: www.facebook.com/schoolsafety
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]]>http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/05/students-choking-school-different-type-school-safety-concern/feed/ 1 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/02/online-group-evacuation-squad-with-ties-to-russia-and-iran-claims-responsibility-for-worldwide-wave-of-school-bomb-threats/ http://www.schoolsecurity.org/2016/02/online-group-evacuation-squad-with-ties-to-russia-and-iran-claims-responsibility-for-worldwide-wave-of-school-bomb-threats/#respond Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:00:04 +0000 http://www.schoolsecurity.org/?p=6499 An online group named “Evacuation Squad” is claiming responsibility for a wave of worldwide school bomb threats, according to the digital media website Mashable and news outlets in the United Kingdom and Australia. Mashable says that Evacuation Squad is made up of six international members and listed a Russian email address on its social media […]
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