School Safety Conference

The Missouri School Boards’ Association is putting on a Coordinated School Safety Conference July 22nd & 23rd at the Tan-Tar-A Resort at theLake of the Ozarks (http://www.schoolsafetyconference.com).

School safety conferences are a great way for school administrators to keep abreast of “best practices” and establish a network of professionals that possess a common interest in making schools even safer. School administrators should try to attend a conference with someone from their local law enforcement, fire and/or emergency management agency. This can help foster discussions back home and strengthen relationships between stakeholders.

Pre-conference events (a US Department of Homeland Security certified workshop titled “Understanding and Planning for Campus Bomb Incidents” and a screening of the film “CUT: Teens and Self Injury”) commence on Wednesday, July 21.

Hope to see you there.
Stay Safe,

Brad

Preparing for Severe Weather and Tornados

This weekend’s storms exhibited a tragic reminder of the importance of all-hazards planning. It is all too easy to focus on events like bomb threats, school shootings and overlook severe weather preparedness. While a school is obviously at the mercy of the storm as to where a tornado appears, a great deal can be done to prepare for and mitigate the effects of a tornado or extreme winds.

In the way of preparedness here are some recommended steps that go beyond the standard severe weahter shelter plans:
Pre-Planning
• Work with local emergency management officials to determine severe weather shelter areas
• Consider Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training for select staff
• Conduct drills to test communications (to include mass notificaiton) and movement to shelter assignments
• Preplan evacuation routes and rally points (avoiding power lines) in the event the school becomes damages and unsafe

When Severe Weather is a Possibility:• Assign staff to monitor weather
• Ensure radios (two-way/walkie-talkies and weather radios) are charged and conduct a staff meeting to review plans
• Consider special events, outdoor activities and bus times
When a Severe Weather Watch Occurs:
• Establish an interior command post
• Ask teachers to review severe weather plans
• Increase staff monitoring during transition times and meal periods
• Compare estimated storm impact with release times. Make plans to hold students and communicate with parents.
When a Severe Weather Warning Occurs:•
Enact severe weather plans

Always collaborate with your local response agencies on emergency planning issues.

Stay safe!
Brad

This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.

Click here to learn more about the author

Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Grant

Grant applications are now being accepted for the US Dept of Ed Readiness & Emergency Management for Schools grant. The deadline is Feb. 26, 2010 and these grants are highly competitive.

LINK TO GRANT HOMEPAGE

The following is taken from the Dept. of Ed Website:

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

This grant program supports efforts by LEAs to create, strengthen, and improve emergency management plans at the district and school-building levels, including training school personnel on emergency management procedures; communicating with parents about emergency plans and procedures; and coordinating with local law enforcement, public safety or emergency management, public health, and mental health agencies and local government.

TYPES OF PROJECTS

Grant funds may be used for the following activities: reviewing and revising emergency management plans, training school staff, conducting building and facilities audits, communicating emergency response policies to parents and guardians, implementing the National Incident Management System (NIMS), developing an infectious disease plan, developing or revising food defense plans, purchasing school safety equipment (to a limited extent), conducting drills and tabletop simulation exercises; and preparing and distributing copies of emergency management plans.

SafePlans is able to provide general recommendations to assist applicants, but as we will compete for grant funds, we do not write grants for applicants.

September is National Preparedness Month!

September is National Preparedness Month!

“Today marks the beginning of National Preparedness Month, an opportunity for our nation’s families and communities to discuss their plans if they were faced with an emergency.Protecting the United States from threats like terrorism, natural disasters, and infectious diseases is a shared responsibility and everyone has an important role to play” – Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Homeland Security, September 2, 2009

SafePlans is proud to be a part of our emergency preparedness community.

Secretary Napolitano was in New York today [September 2] to introduce a series of new public service advertisement (PSAs) produced for the Ready Campaign (http://www.ready.gov/). The Ready Campaign’s mission is to inform and educate the public on how to best prepare for a major disaster,



http://www.ready.gov/america/about/psa.html

Columbine. Anniversaries are important – even the bad ones.

On April 20, 1999 two cowards made their way into history by murdering 12 students and a teacher. For most, this anniversary will pass unnoticed. For some, the Columbine anniversary will bring powerful memories of an awful tragedy.

For a very few, the Columbine anniversary will invoke grandiose ideations of violence and immortality that fuel school shooters.

While most attack anniversaries pass without “copy cat” attacks, it is important that school administrators pause to consider the situational awareness of their school.

While it may not be feasible to implement a threat assessment program prior to April 20th, there is plenty of time to ask teachers and counselors if there are any students exhibiting indicators that anyone a concern for their safety or the safety of others. Students exhibiting these indicators need help; whether or not they actually intend on carrying out an attack. Remember the cardinal rule in assessing potentially violent behavior: It is not if the person makes a threat, it is if they pose a threat.

Remember, the cowards at Columbine did not just snap. Theirs was a building process that culminated just one day after the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings (April 19, 1995).

For those of us that will remember Columbine, let’s remember the victims

• Cassie Bernall
• Steve Curnow
• Corey DePooter
• Kelly Fleming
• Matt Kechter
• Daniel Mauser
• Daniel Rohrbough
• Rachel Scott
• Isaiah Shoels
• John Tomlin
• Lauren Townsend
• Kyle Velasquez
• Coach Dave Sanders

…and never again speak the names of their killers.

This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.

Click here to learn more about the author

Are School Shooters Terrorists?

Terrorism is defined in the U.S. by the Code of Federal Regulations as: “..the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
Maybe.

But it seems to me the goal of the “modern” terrorist (circa September 10, 2001) is to kill as many people as possible and gain maximum notoriety for their attack. With this definition, the shooters in Columbine and Virginia Tech are rightly labeled as terrorist, without having to consider their clearly stated social objectives.
Note: I am following LTC Dave Grossman’s lead here in not listing the names of the cowards that carried out these shootings.
These cowardly acts of terrorism were no more spontaneous than the Oklahoma City Bombing, September 11th attacks or the Beslan, Russia school massacre. School shootings are not impulsive acts. If we are to prevent and mitigate terrorist style attacks in schools there are several factors to consider. For starters, consider where the attacks can come from. The attack can come from someone within the school (Internal, such as Jonesboro, Columbine, Virginia Tech) or from someone who does not belong at the school (External, such as Bailey, CO, Nickel Mines, PA or Belan, Russia).

For the “internal” based attacks there are several prevention/mitigation strategies such as:

• Threat Assessment Program
• Lockdown Plans & Drills
• On-site Law Enforcement/Rapid Armed Response
• Site Mapping

Prevention/mitigation strategies for “external” type threats:

• Access Control & Physical Security
• Security Awareness:
• On-site Law Enforcement/Rapid Armed Response
• Site Mapping
• Lockdown Plans & Drills

Remember, always collaborate with your local response agencies on emergency planning issues.

Stay safe!
Brad

This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.

Click here to learn more about the author

Case Study – Fighting Back Against a School Shooter

Lately it seems there has been a lot of interest in schools and colleges instructing teachers to fight back when confronted with an armed attacker. Certainly the thought of having teachers (and even students) being told to throw books and fight back against a gunman is incredible and counter-intuitive. Luckily no one ever told by Ryan Crowley, Jake Ryker, Josh Ryker, Douglas Ure, Davis Ure, Ada Walberger, Joshua Pearson and Travis Weaver not to fight back against a school shooter. In 1998, these seven students prevented an attacker from killing more of their schoolmates.

On May 20, 1998, 15year-old Kipland (Kip) Phillip Kinkel was expelled from school for possessing a loaded firearm. His father, Bill Kinkel, a 59 year-old Spanish teacher picked him up from the police station, where they stopped at a Burger King on the drive home.

This was not Kip’s first mishap and his obsession with guns was well known to his parents. In fact, his Dad even purchased him numerous weapons for Kip despite disturbing tendencies such as building bombs, torturing neighborhood cats, throwing rocks of freeway bridges and treatment for mental disorders that included hallucinating and hearing voices.

Continue Reading…

The Way NOT to Conduct a Lockdown Drill

Recently a school district implemented a surprise lockdown drill at an early learning center that included pretend bad guys using weapons firing blank rounds. If this school had armed teachers, like the school in Texas discussed in a previous post, I suspect I’d be writing about a completely different tragedy. As it is, the tragedy was only in training and that is where mistakes are supposed to happen.

http://map.schoolsafetynews.com/eventdetail.php?ID=987

When you get right down to it, security measures can accomplish two things: reduce risks and/or reduce anxiety. Sometimes measures that reduce risk actually increase anxiety. This is regrettable but the benefit of improved safety outweighs the impact of increased anxiety. Security measures that increase anxiety (such as the previously mentioned lockdown drill) should only be implemented when no other alternatives exist or the anxiety can be mitigated.

Clearly the district’s intentions were well meaning; after all most district won’t even allow lockdown drills. However, it does appear they were overzealous in their approach. FEMA recommends a progressive training approach of seminar, drill, tabletop exercise, functional exercise and full scale exercise. A lockdown training program should have the same crawl, walk, and run approach.

Utilizing the progressive FEMA training approach ,schools or colleges can introduce staff (and students) to lockdown responses during seminars. Drills designed to test one or two specific objectives are next. Initially, these drills should be structured and implemented in a no fault learning environment. Once the drill is reasonably well mastered, more advanced scenarios can be incorporated and additional objectives can be tested.

When developing a lockdown training program, consult with mental health experts to determine the effects of simulated combat scenarios and ensure student training is age appropriate. Make certain instructors can adequately address all aspects of planning for a shooter.

Stay safe
Brad

This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.
Click here to learn more about the author

©2008 SafePlans, LLC

School District Says “No” to Armed Guards

As colleges, universities, schools and districts get ready for the start of another school year; Iowa City School District made a major security-related decision. They decided not to do anything and keep School Resource Officers (SRO’s), armed guards or unarmed security of any kind out of their schools.
According to an article the District committee that made this recommendation was comprised of principals, teachers, students and parents. Seemingly absent from the committee was law enforcement and/or security professionals.

This decision is extremely unfortunate. I firmly believe the single most valuable school safety improvement that can be implemented is placing a School Resource Officer in a school. School Resource Officers are law enforcement professionals that have receive specialized training to help them thrive in a school setting. Their roll goes far beyond that of security and is a great example of community based policing.
Certainly armed security guards can have considerable training and are an asset to school safety; but they generally lack the same level of training as an SRO. However, if a school district is asking a security officer to protect students from a violent attack; such as Columbine or Virginia Tech, unarmed security really isn’t security at all. That is not meant as an insult to unarmed security officers. Even the bravest firefighter usually requires some tools to protect and rescue people from an inferno. Security is no different. If your job is to stop a school shooter, a weapon is a requirement.
Principals, teachers, students and parents, asking to have a School Resource Officer assigned to your school is not a sign of trouble. It is a commitment to safety.
Remember, always collaborate with your local response agencies on emergency planning issues.
Stay safe!
Brad
This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.

Secondary Attacks and Their Countermeasures VIDEO

Coordinate assessment and response strategies with law enforcement.

Stay safe
Brad

This post is provided by SafePlans (www.safeplans.com), an all-hazards preparedness solution including emergency plans, staff training, and detailed site mapping.