Our last blog post explained more about school safety teams, their responsibilities, and why they’re important. This post, we look into school safety team training and why it’s necessary for effective communications.
When an emergency occurs, every second counts. Emergencies range from a child with a broken arm, an aggressive dog on the playground, a fight near the bathrooms, to a potential intruder. Clear communication and swift coordination are essential to ensuring the safety of students, staff, and first responders.
That’s where we come in. SchoolSAFE is a program to improve communications at the school, district, and community responder levels. We bridge communication gaps and empower school safety teams with the tools and knowledge to respond effectively in critical situations. School safety team training is crucial to improve those communications.
Regular emergency drills and exercises are crucial to the school safety team’s responsibilities. The team coordinates and conducts drills for various scenarios, including fire, natural disaster, and active shooter situations. They also ensure that staff and students are well-trained in these procedures, providing clear instructions and fostering a culture of preparedness. Ongoing training sessions for staff are essential to keep everyone informed of the latest safety protocols.
Here, we show the “why” when it comes to the importance of training. Watch how SchoolSAFE training empowers school safety teams to communicate effectively during emergencies. Together, we can create safer schools and stronger communities. Check out our latest video here.
Contact us to learn more about the SchoolSAFE program and keeping your schools safer.
In today’s world, ensuring the safety and security of students, staff, and visitors is a top priority for schools. One critical component of this effort is the establishment of a School Safety Team. But what exactly is a School Safety Team, and what do they do? Let’s dive into the purpose, structure, and responsibilities of this essential group.
What is a School Safety Team?
To start, a School Safety Team is a designated group of individuals within a school who are responsible for planning, implementing, and overseeing safety protocols and emergency preparedness. This team typically includes the principal, school administrators, deans, counselors, security personnel, maintenance & custodial personnel, and sometimes even teachers. The primary goal of the team is to manage a safe and secure environment where learning can thrive, free from the fear of violence, accidents, or other all-hazard emergencies that occur at schools every day.
Core Responsibilities of a School Safety Team
Risk Assessment and Planning:
The School Safety Team should conduct a thorough risk assessment of the school’s physical environment and policies or be very familiar with the assessment. This involves identifying potential hazards, such as unsecured entrances, fire risks, or cyber threats. Based on this assessment, the team develops a comprehensive safety plan that addresses these risks and outlines procedures for responding to emergencies, such as lockdowns, evacuations/reunifications, or shelter-in-place orders.
Emergency Exercises and Training:
Regular emergency drills and exercises are a crucial part of the School Safety Team’s responsibilities. The team coordinates and conducts drills for various scenarios, including fire, natural disaster, and active shooter situations. They also ensure that staff and students are well-trained in these procedures, providing clear instructions and fostering a culture of preparedness. Ongoing training sessions for staff are essential to keep everyone informed of the latest safety protocols.
Crisis Management:
In the event of an emergency, the School Safety Team takes the lead in crisis management. They implement the emergency plan, coordinate with local authorities, and ensure the safety of all individuals on campus. The team also communicates with parents and the community during and after an incident, providing updates and instructions as needed.
Promoting a Safe School Climate:
Beyond responding to emergencies, the School Safety Team plays a proactive role in promoting a positive and safe school climate. This can include initiatives like mental health support and conflict resolution strategies. By fostering a supportive environment, the team helps prevent issues from escalating into more serious safety concerns.
Collaboration with Local Agencies:
The School Safety Team often works closely with local law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency medical services to ensure a coordinated response to incidents. Additionally, they may partner with community organizations to provide additional resources, such as counseling services or educational programs, that contribute to the overall safety and well-being of students. SchoolSAFE is a community partner, helping to grow the relationships between schools and their community partners. Furthermore, we help the safety team be as strong as possible, while enabling partnerships for effective communications between local agencies for safer schools.
The Importance of a School Safety Team
Lastly, having a dedicated School Safety Team is essential for any school. It not only prepares the school for emergencies but also actively works to prevent them. By maintaining a strong emergency operations plan, regularly training staff and students, and promoting a positive school climate, the team ensures that everyone on campus can focus on learning.
A Safety Team is a vital part of a school’s infrastructure. Their work behind the scenes helps to create a secure and nurturing environment, allowing students and staff to thrive. Whether it’s planning for potential risks, managing crises, or fostering a safe school climate, the contributions of this team are invaluable to the entire school community.
In Colorado, the Office of School Safety oversees several grants to improve school safety. One of those grants is the School Access for Emergency Funding or SAFER Grant. The SAFER grant funds interoperability. Technically, it aims to increase access to interoperable communications technology to improve school safety. Below, we discuss what the grant funds, what is interoperability, how SchoolSAFE fits the grant requirements, and the next steps you can take to make your schools safer.
What exactly does SAFER fund?
The grant program provides money to districts/schools and public safety communications networks for needed interoperable hardware, software, and training solutions.
As written into law, the grant requires the solution to have the aforementioned three components. This allows for seamless communications between existing school district communications systems and first responder communications systems (interoperability, see below). That’s all fancy talk for the easier summary: The SAFER Grant funds solutions that allow separate two-way radio networks to speak to each other when needed. Find the formal rules in section 24-33.5-2104 (1-5) here.
What is interoperability and why is it important?
Interoperability is the ability for different entities to communicate with each other when they otherwise couldn’t. What does this mean? Let’s look at public safety and how they communicate. Public safety includes law enforcement, fire, EMTs, 9-1-1 public safety answering points. They have different tools to be able to speak to each other. They have a two-way radio on their hip or shoulder, they have cell phones, maybe a computer in their car, another radio in their vehicle, etc. Public safety’s radio network, out of necessity, covers a lot of area and is therefore expensive.
School districts and schools operate with two-way radios, too, but their networks are smaller to cover the area of the district/schools and are more cost-effective. These two radio networks normally do not allow for communications to occur between each other. They’re disparate. But! When these networks connect, when everyone can talk together when they otherwise couldn’t, we have interoperability. Interoperability improves the response because all parties can work together with better communication.
Where does SchoolSAFE Fit?
This is where SchoolSAFE comes in. We provide interoperable communications between public safety and schools. SchoolSAFE is activated after a 9-1-1 call. A dispatcher, through Memorandums of Understanding put in place through the program, connects public safety radios to district and school radios during an emergency. The varying groups can speak to each other on a public safety-designated radio channel. An added bonus: the dispatcher has bridging (connecting) options. They can select one specific school to bridge, a feeder area if needed (a few elementary schools, middle school(s) and high school), or the entire district. With the event over, the dispatcher at the 9-1-1 dispatch center disconnects the networks. Everyone is back to their own separate two-way radio networks.
There is a district component, too. The safety director at the district can be in charge of bridging within their district if needed. They can’t control public safety radio channels, that’s for the pros. So, if there needs to be a district-wide announcement via two-way radio, poof! SchoolSAFE has it covered.
SchoolSAFE is fully SAFER grant-compliant. The solution provides hardware at the schools and software that turns the connection from public safety radios to the school radios on and off. The program provides a robust training program (if we do say so ourselves) that includes safety teams at the schools, district personnel, PSAPs, and other involved responders. We work in step with the districts’ compliance with the Colorado School Response Framework. We also help train school safety teams at each school and we solidify or improve the community partnerships that are so vital between public safety responders and school and district personnel.
So How Does it Work In Real Life?
For example, at dismissal time, a student is hit by a car in the school parking lot. The safety team at the school will speak on their radio to get the details that are important for a high-quality 9-1-1 call. Then, they will try to clear the area, get the school nurse out to the student, help direct traffic away from the student, etc. In the meantime, the 9-1-1 dispatcher bridges SchoolSAFE. Next, the dispatcher directs the ambulance personnel to go to a designated channel.
They announce to the school safety team that SchoolSAFE is bridged (connected), and the safety team tells the ambulance to come in on a specific side street or area of the building to avoid the line of cars. The team provides the pertinent information about the student who has been hit, and/or answers questions from the EMTs. All of this real-time communication helps speed up the response, getting the student faster and more effective care.
Next Steps
For the school districts in Colorado, check back here. As discussed, the SAFER grant funds interoperability. We’ll be sharing the Office of School Safety’s grant announcement when it’s on Colorado’s Office of School Safety’s website. Contact us to learn more about interoperable communications, the SAFER Grant, and how we can help improve your school/district’s safety.
We have been helping districts with tabletop exercise for years. Currently, schools are returning to in-person teaching and learning. The stress and concern related to the pandemic continues to affect students, staff, and their families. The education community is very aware of the potential mental health issues that accompany this ongoing stress and concern. Fortunately, the community is taking steps to improve early recognition and intervention for those needing special care. As we return to the classroom, it is important for us to recognize that school safety risks are also impacted by this concern. Preparedness is more important than ever. Where do we start? It begins with training of the school safety team and other staff regarding their roles and responsibilities during an emergency at school.
What Is A Tabletop Exercise?
A tabletop exercise allows a school safety team to put their safety training to a test in a safe and relatively stress-free setting. Tabletop exercises (TTX) are discussion-based exercises regarding a hypothetical, simulated emergency scenario. The TTX is intended to improve general awareness and validate plans and procedures to enhance conceptual understanding of roles and responsibilities, identify potential tactics and responses, uncover gaps and areas for improvement, and achieve changes in perceptions.
So How Do You Start?
The following steps can supercharge a tabletop exercise assumes that two-way radios are a part of a school’s emergency communication plan.
Choose a school-based emergency incident and write a 2 to 3 sentence description
Gather the participants (with their radios) and explain the exercise process
Send the person who will be in charge of the incident (the Incident Commander) out of the room with their radio
Display the scenario on a screen to the participants in the room
Ask one person to summarize the scenario and use the radio to report it to the Incident Commander (IC)
The IC will use that information to size up the situation, form a response plan, and begin assigning response tasks to the participants by using the radio to communicate. Example: direct a specific person to call 911. Continue this for 60-90 seconds or until the IC runs out of task assignments
Bring the IC back into the room and conduct a “hotwash” to discuss how effective the radio communications were: what went well with the task assignments and the order of the assignments, and what could be improved.
Finally, during the hotwash, discussions of who should do what and when are valuable to help people understand and apply their training regarding their roles and responsibilities during a particular emergency event. Using the radio to “work” the scenario brings a level of realism to the tabletop discussions that helps to supercharge the learning. Want to discuss further? Contact us!