What are the components of a school safety plan?
A proper best practice of school safety has four distinct and written plan sections that every public and independent school in this country should have. First is a written prevention and mitigation plan. That's a distinct section that outlines the steps in place and strategies to keep bad incidents from happening, and to mitigate or minimize the negative impact of those events that cannot be prevented. Second is our preparedness plan, the most difficult part of the plan to develop. That's the written guidelines and other measures that are in place to prepare our staff and students to respond to some type of crisis. The third is the response plan, which is the plan that will help us manage the situations, the National Incident Management System for example, our ability to communicate under stress. It is the plan that allows people under extreme stress to implement the written preparedness plan. Finally we have the recovery plan, which has two components. First is the mental health recovery plan to help our people recover from the emotional trauma of a crisis, and our business continuity plan. That is the plan that we use to get the business of school back up and running if we have damage to facilities or systems. And all four of these plan phases are crucial to a safe school environment.
