How to Develop a School Emergency Plan

Schools can designate specific gathering locations before an emergency happens.

When parents send their precious offspring to school, they expect that their children will be protected from unexpected occurrences by the teachers and staff. However, through school tragedies and emergencies, schools are made painfully aware of how unprepared for some of the situations that occur. Every school should have an emergency preparedness plan beyond fire drills; if a plan is not in place, schools should understand the urgency of preparing one.

Things You'll Need

• Emergency template
• List of community emergency numbers

Instructions

1. Arrange a meeting with community emergency providers, such as the fire chief, the ambulance coordinator and a 911 emergency switchboard coordinator. These professionals will give you specific information, such as the best areas to congregate during an emergency. They can also inform you about how to prepare a plan to reduce confusion during the event. For example, if the plan is to send all students to an alternate building during a bomb threat, the community emergency teams can assist with planning the alternate location so that everyone knows where the group of people will meet at all times.

2. Examine your school's unique needs and resources. Perhaps the school in question is an alternative school for disabled children. This type of school would need a different plan than a mainstream school, such as extra aid from outside the school to assist with removing the children or classrooms with wider escape windows to remove wheelchairs.

3. Consider your emergency teams; are they volunteer or paid? Reaction times between the teams are substantially different. Also consider the location of the emergency teams in proximity to the school. Seconds matter in an emergency, and knowing how long it will take to receive help should factor into the emergency plan. If the school is large or far away from emergency responders, having additional staff trained in CPR or first aid may be advantageous to compensate for these factors.

4. Prepare an emergency template, or obtain a template from your state department that details specific information regarding each emergency plan you have in place. Provide emergency numbers on the plan. An emergency template is a chart outlining procedures for every possible emergency. The chart should list the most-likely emergencies first, such as fires. On the template, a list of individuals or groups, such as classrooms, should be listed with their expected emergency actions highlighted next to their names. For example, in the category of fires, the heading "School Administrator" may list, "Call 911," while a first-grade classroom heading would list, "Teacher calmly lines up students, ensures everyone is in line, turns out lights, closes the door and proceeds to the agreed-upon meeting point outside the school."

5. Examine emergency equipment, such as fire extinguishers or first aid kits, and determine their locations. The last section or page of the template should assign an individual who will grab a first aid kit in the case of a mass evacuation. A schoolwide first aid kit should be located near this person's office. Chart and map where all emergency equipment is located and include this information on the template.

6. Distribute the completed plan to teachers, school administrators, emergency personnel and all others in the building who will be in charge of knowing the escape plan in the event of an emergency.

References

• National School Safety and Secuirty Services: School Crisis/Emergency Plan Templates