School Crisis Scenarios
What is the role of a principal in a school crisis?
Your role as a school administrator is as a leader. Initially you may be the incident commander until appropriate public safety officials arrive, and then you will become a part of the incident command team. The leading role will probably be then assumed by fire, police, emergency management, or a public health official, depending on the nature of the crisis. Now you're the liaison to lead your staff in concert with the public safety agencies that are responding. Preparing yourself for that leadership role is crucial. You're not a worker bee, you're a leader, and that's a very important distinction. Under stress, an improperly prepared leader may find themselves focusing on what are, in retrospect, not the most important tasks. You lead, others follow.
What is a school incident command post?
The incident command post will usually be dictated by the location and type of incident. In a very significant percentage of school crisis incidents it will be located outside of the building, and in many cases completely off your property. It's a concept that should be flexible, it's okay to pick some potential command post sites, but public safety officials day in and day out do this. They go to a bank robbery, a hostage situation or a hazardous materials incident and they quickly look and see what the best site is and set that up. The important thing is for school officials to understand that this is the place where direction of activity will occur. Your command staff or your crisis team leaders should go to this site and work in unison with the incident command team comprised usually of public safety officials working under what is known as the NIMS or National Incident Management System, which is a resource and information system to manage crisis situations to our best ability under stressful situations.
How should a school handle a bomb threat?
Bomb threats are complex, because there's no absolute perfect way to respond to bomb threats. Schools should have very well thought out, flexible plans. If your plans say that you will always evacuate for a bomb threat that is a very dangerous plan. If you go to the same site repeatedly that is a very dangerous plan, because the bomber may use bomb threats to get you to move victims to the place they want where they are more vulnerable. So you need a series of options. We suggest that you work closely with local and state police bomb technicians and bomb experts. Work with your Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) nearest branch office. BATF agents regularly come out and work with schools to help in plan development. The United States Department of Education and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have a free CD rom to guide you in developing your plan and Safe Havens has a 4,000 word topical paper on school bomb threat management that is available free on the resources section of our website. So get to work with your local public safety responders and those experts we mentioned and develop options. Don't be locked in to doing the same thing every time, that is the most dangerous way to respond to a bomb threat. If, in the unlikely event that you are targeted with a bomb attack by someone who is thoughtful they can use your response to inflict greater casualties.
How can a school administrator assess a bomb threat?
First of all, a school administrator should never try to assess a bomb threat alone. If you are an administrator and you have received a bomb threat, or are notified of one from your staff, you want to automatically notify public safety and assess the threat from a viability standpoint and a strategic standpoint in concurrence with your public safety officials. Don't try to do a job that is beyond your scope of training. Working with public safety, you look at the likelihood that there really is a device based on the information you have received, but you also look at it strategically. How can we respond, if there truly is a device, we are making it hard for someone to impact our children and staff with it, but we make that decision with fire, police and emergency management officials.
What should I do if I suspect a student is being abused?
If you're an administrator, follow your organization's policies and your state's reporting laws. You want to , of course, isolate the child from others and talk with them privately. You also need to get some information but do not launch an investigation. Don't get into detail that may be problematic in court later. Notify law enforcement officials, other government agencies as required and appropriate for your state and your jurisdiction. Make sure that your staff understand what their obligations are. If you are a support staff, such as a teacher, a receptionist, or a school nutrition employee, make sure you are aware of what your school's system or your school's policies are and the laws that are typically posted in your policy manuals. Make sure you are aware of that, so one day if you encounter this situation, you can act appropriately, because you can hinder the investigative process, and you can deny a child help, if we take the wrong actions. One of the ones we have seen most commonly, although it's getting to be much more rare these days, is where we try to become the police investigator, and we go too far down that path of asking questions. Once we have an allegation, we notify those who are under our state's laws, and our district's or organization's policies set forth to investigate those, and then we assist them.
Should school administrators intervene in cases of domestic conflict?
If you're aware of domestic conflict involving your staff or your students, you want to have things in place to buffer your school from that. For example, if I were an administrator, I would want to talk to my staff about the situation up front and say, look, if you have a situation involving a spouse or some other individual - maybe they're stalking you or threatening you - they need to know that they can come to you, and that you won't broadcast their private information throughout the school. But then we have some ways of increasing security, for example you may seek their permission to notify a few key staff. If you're a principal, it would be your assistant principal, office staff, if you have one; a school resource officer, to be alert for the individual, their car, that type of thing. And again without broadcasting their personal business to the school. Students should be aware that they should bring these situations to your attention, and again that their privacy will be supported, and not just expected, but delivered. So, some communication up front and then good follow through. Be thoughtful about how we approach these situations when they occur, because we do see instances where domestic situations in the community or at home do come to school with tragic results.
How can school administrators protect children when a restraining order is involved?
If you are notified of a restraining order the first thing you want to do is, is of course, obtain copies. Follow your organizations policies, make sure you are in compliance with court orders, but you also want to seek additional information. You want to know, for example, if there is an individual that has made threats against a student, you want to try and find out what may not be in those papers; what type of car does the individual drive, what is the license plate number? Again, respect their privacy, seek the individual's permission to communicate this with key staff, put some things in place as appropriate. I've seen situations when I was a school district police chief where we actually put a officer, for several days, at an elementary school where we didn't typically have a officer, we locked parking lot gates, we changed some procedures for a few days, until the individual was caught. In this case he was emotionally disturbed, he was known to have several firearms, and had threatened to kill a child. So, do whatever is appropriate to that situation, but with thought. Communicate with your community partners, your police department, mental health resources, court officials, as appropriate to the situation. And make sure you have good records and an understanding of what you're supposed to do, before that individual walks into your front office.
How should school administrators handle suspicious packages?
You should have thoughtfully developed a plan in place that was put together working with local police, fire, emergency management, public health officials and others who can help you develop a step by step plan. You should practice and know that plan, and your staff should be aware of it. The key concepts are quick communication with public safety officials and as appropriate to the situation, containment may be appropriate to contain the package. Isolate that area and move people out of there. It may be appropriate to shut down HVAC systems to reduce movement of air through the building, but you will probably be directed by public safety officials which courses of action to follow. Know your plan after it is carefully developed, and practice it and implement it with guidance from public safety officials.
How can schools prepare for natural disasters?
Schools should prepare for natural disasters as they do for any other type of hazard. Your preparations need to be developed hand in hand with emergency management, police, fire and other public safety officials based on your communities hazard and vulnerability assessment. You should be very careful not to focus on just those events that quickly come to mind. We see many school systems and independent schools that aren't aware of their risk to flood, for example, or different types of severe weather, so make sure that you've looked at that hazard and vulnerability assessment for your community and that you cover each of the natural disasters that can occur at your location, keeping in mind that some may be very unlikely, but may be catastrophic in nature. Many schools are located in regions that are not typically prone to earthquakes but where an earthquake can occur and be catastrophic, so that threat must be addressed in your plan.
Can a school really prepare for a terrorist threat?
Like any other threat, schools can be very well prepared for terrorists' events. Schools very close in proximity to the World Trade Center on September eleventh were very prepared and did most things very well, even under the tremendous scope of that situation. By handling your core functions like integrating the National Incident Management System into your plan, having your superintendent and head of school, their cabinet, all principals and assistant principals and all crisis team members trained formally on the National Incident Management System, you'll be better prepared to handle any crisis - from a tornado to a terrorist attack. So yes, you can prepare for most incidents, including acts of terrorism.
