A new guide to school emergency response planning is rolled out |
On Board Online • March 16, 2015
By Linda Bakst
Deputy Director of Policy Services
Suppose a substitute teaches a fourth grade class in your school district on Tuesday and then teaches a fifth grade class in another district on Friday. Let's further imagine that there is a fire drill on Tuesday and an announcement over the public address system that there is a 'lockdown' on Friday. How will this substitute teacher know what to do?
Standardized language and procedures common to all schools would help the substitute and others in the building respond appropriately. That's why the Safe Schools NY Improvement Team has been sharing a new template designed to improve building-level safety plans.
The State Police and several state agencies have collaborated to develop this tool for building level emergency response plans. Regional meetings have been taking place across the state so that school districts can learn about the new resource and discuss its implementation.
Representatives of the State Education Department, the State Police, the Division of Homeland Security Emergency Services and the Department of Criminal Justice Services collaborated on the project, using a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The main goal of the project has been to standardize building safety plans and to standardize the language associated with school emergencies. Essentially, there are five emergency responses: (1) shelter-in-place, (2) hold-in-place, (3) evacuation, (4) lockout and (5) lockdown. Click here for description of each.
The idea is to give staff, substitutes and BOCES personnel who work in multiple buildings or multiple districts a common vocabulary and a general sense of the steps to take. In addition, first responders will be familiar with the language and procedures.
While attendees at a recent training event welcomed the idea of standardizing language, it became apparent during the question and answer session that implementing the template will involve challenges due to unique circumstances. For instance, one school may have train tracks adjacent to school property and another may have a major interstate. But beyond that, even the configuration of the school building may lead to differences, for example, in how to shelter-in-place. Trainers said the template is being offered as a tool to help districts to be more organized in their approach and bring some standardization to procedures where it is appropriate.
One goal appears easy to achieve: Having all school districts share their safety plans for each building plan with local police and State Police. Trainers said one problem was that school officials didn't know where to send the plans. The new template includes a single mailing address and email address for all districts to use to send their completed plans.
The task force is also working on creating a mechanism for improving first responder access to the plans, while keeping them secure so that they are not able to be accessed by the general public.