National School Safety and Security Services provides school emergency planning evaluations to help schools identify strengths and areas to build upon for creating school emergency plans that not only look good on paper, but stand a better chance of working effectively in a real emergency.  Most school leaders know their schools have plans.  They just don’t know whether their plans have appropriate or questionable content, if staff have adequately been trained for emergency preparedness, what type of testing and exercising of plans can be done in a reasonable amount of time, and how to improve the chances of what is on paper working in a real emergency.

One of our currently most popular services, the school emergency planning/preparedness consultation typically involves our experienced team conducting off-site review of policies, procedures, emergency/crisis guidelines, and related documents to help answer these questions based upon our experience of over 25 years in the school safety field.  On-site work typically includes individual and focus group interviews with district and building level staff, and key community partners, as well as select visits to district schools and support facilities as appropriate.

School emergency planning evaluations and consultation service helps school leaders evaluate school emergency and crisis plans, district and building school crisis teams, school safety drills and exercises, school training on emergency and crisis plans, school crisis communications, and related school emergency planning components.

The goal of the multi-day emergency preparedness evaluation consultation is to identify strengths and gaps in:
1. existing district and building emergency planning processes,
2. existing district level and building level written emergency plans, and their interrelationship of the plans,
3. content of written plans versus actual practices at the district and building levels,
4. relationships with first responders and other community partners,
5. level and adequacy of engagement of key employee groups and school-community constituents,
6. types, methods, and adequacy of school emergency drills, exercises, etc.,
7. adequacy of crisis parent and media communications, joint information sharing plans, etc.,
8. professional development training of certified and support staff, students, parents, and others,

and related assessment issues.

For school emergency planning grant recipients, this professional evaluation assessment will foster school emergency planning sustainability past the grant period by identifying strengths and gaps in written plans versus practice, methods for improving emergency planning processes and relationships, needs for engaging diverse employee support groups and school-community partners to improve potential for long-term planning sustainability, and focusing on “nuts-and-bolts” best practices that can be institutionalized without long-term dependency upon outside experts and costly ongoing resources.

A final report is submitted with observations of positive existing emergency preparedness elements in place and recommendations for building upon current emergency planning efforts.

Emergency planning/preparedness evaluation consultation visits  can be combined with professional development training on school emergency planning, tabletop exercises, and related services

For more information on these services, contact Ken Trump.