School secretaries take bomb threat calls made to schools.

School custodians and maintenance staff know the physical plant layout and operations better than any other school employee, including the school principal.

School food services staff not only serve students breakfast and lunch, but also have to know what to do if fights, riots, lockdowns, evacuations, or other safety issues arise in their school cafeterias.

School bus drivers and transportation staff are often the first and last school employees to see students each day, and must manage threats to safety on board their buses and at bus stops.

Our school support staff are often undertrained, not included in school emergency planning, and not members of school crisis teams.

National School Safety and Security Services offers specialized support staff emergency preparedness training for secretaries, custodians and maintenance staff, and food services staff. This program has been designed to be conducted in a series of one or two hour sessions (longer if time permits) per employee group (separate sessions for secretaries, custodians and food services staff) in a manner respective of time constraints for staff release from buildings. Sessions will be specific to each employee group roles and responsibilities in security and emergency preparedness.

Secretary sessions will include managing angry and threatening persons, role in access control, parent-student reunification roles, managing bomb threat calls, role on crisis team, etc.

Custodian and maintenance staff sessions focus on roles of day and night custodial staff related to security and emergency response, roles on crisis teams for planning, facility information needed in tactical response, procedures for specific emergencies, after-hours emergencies, and related topics.

Food services will include cafeteria security procedures, impact of drills (lockdowns, etc.) during breakfast and lunch periods, emergency food supplies, food security and protection measures, access to food service vendors, role on school and district crisis teams, and related topics.

A specialized training on school security and emergency preparedness best practices is also offered for school bus drivers and transportation staff.

The goal is to create an improved awareness of the importance of support staff roles in site-based emergency planning and district level response, and to better engage and empower support staff workers to be more proactive members of school crisis planning teams. Engagement of support service staff will improve the sustainability of school emergency planning by expanding the planning to include perspectives and needs of special employee support groups, and to increase inclusion of these employee groups into the emergency planning and exercising processes to improve crisis response.

Contact Ken Trump for more information.