School Safety: To Plan, or Not to Plan.........

On PIOs and dealing with the media during developing and/or ongoing incidents:

http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/article/advice_to_security_professionals_when_dealing_with_the_media

A very basic overview, but useful, none the less.

Love the headline, but the article is really what everyone should be paying attention to:

Plans Don’t Respond to School Emergencies, People Do

Adding a couple more articles to what has become a very long list of resources on the issue of school safety. The first is from an organization/publication I've shared in previous posts, but this article goes to the heart of what can, and arguably should, be done to help address the issue of campus safety. The focus here is on colleges and universities, but the concepts and suggestions can, and, again, arguably should, be just as easily be applied to K-12:

Here We Go Again… Another Mass Shooting

The second article is from another organization/publication I've previously shared on the issue of school safety. This one also mentions Columbine as a "game changer" for how response to these types of scenarios evolved and now continues to evolve as a result:

Maryland Colleges Study Mass Shootings with Hopes of Prevention

There's been a lot of talk about installing metal detectors in every school with an armed guard on duty during school hours. I believe the course of action presented in this article is a much better one:

Stopping school shootings: Foundation in Chardon working to get school resource officer in every school

Including age appropriate students in the planning process for anything and everything school safety related is something we've been talking about on our own website for quite a few years now. Am glad to see at least one location has taken their own initiative and is realizing kids have a lot to offer....if we, the adults, not only give them a chance to do so, but to also sometimes get out of our way and be able to actually "hear" what they have to say.

Kudos to this effort in North Carolina!!!!

High school student appointed to School Safety Task Force

Video embedded in this article goes to the issue of exercises (not just drills) and their importance in responding to incidents (not just active shooters, although that's what this one is about) in schools. A clear focus on communications takes this exercise beyond a singular focus on response by emergency personnel, and puts it into the realm of how communications between and amongst response organizations and their "boots on the ground" become absolutely critical in that response.

SchoolSAFE Communications at Columbine High School

One school at the university level that is doing it "right":

Many Colleges’ New Emergency Plan: Try to Account for Every Possibility

This goes directly to what I've been trying to put out there in this entire thread....that an all hazards approach to emergency operations planning is so much better than a one hazard (active shooter, specifically) approach. Threat and risk assessments are a critical aspect of this process as noted in this article.

ScienceChic wrote: I like their focus: having a plan but emphasizing the people/team involved. It's people who respond, having them all on the same page helps immensely!

Goes directly to the "hardware, software, and warmware" philosophy of involvement. There simply has to be a balance in all three.

Too often, the reaction following disaster and emergency events is to focus in on one singular issue, the flavor of the day so to speak, and pour what may ultimately be unneeded resources in its direction (the Ambulance in the Valley analogy comes to mind here). So it was following "Columbine". While the communications issues surrounding the response to this travesty were widely known and acknowledged, the fact is the efforts to address some of those issues are still ongoing even today. This just goes to show how difficult, complex, and, yes, even messy, the emergency management program development process can be.

In the vast majority of mass school shootings, those who would cause harm, or who actually did cause harm, either told others beforehand what they had planned, or there were other indicators of their intent. This story that ultimately had a good ending is a prime example of how a school's emergency management program (in this case, they called it a security plan) can, and should, work to address a viable threat.

The only thing I would raise as a potential "planning issue" in doing followup reviews is the use of complex terminology during the incident. The article states the school has a much reviewed and practiced security plan. If everyone knew the terminology that was being used, and they took appropriate action(s) based on established procedures, then more power to them. If not, then they might want to consider revisiting terminology and definitions in order to help simplify response as much as they possibly can. A good place to start might be with The I Love U Guys Foundation Standard Response Protocols.

Apparently, the school in this article already has an established emergency management program. It would be a seamless transition to adopt the SRPs and incorporate them into their existing protocols as replacement for what they already have. Keeping it simple and straightforward is advocated by experts as the way to go. Moving away from terminology that uses anything resembling code words or actions ("code blue", or "code red", or similar, for example) is encouraged. The SRPs do both.

Teen's threats test high school security plan