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Planning for a crisis might be intimidating, so we've gathered a few resources to help you plan for potential unexpected events. Unfortunately, emergency situations do arise in schools and they’re unpredictable. You may not always have the ability to stop them from happening, but you can develop a response plan so that you are prepared for it if something does occur. We hope they never happen in your school or district, but there is no way of knowing for sure so it's important to plan ahead. You can do everything in your power to ensure safety in your school and an unforeseen event could still arise, like a natural disaster. In an article in K-12 Dive, they cover how to craft an effective school crisis response plan.
The article discusses both prevention and crisis intervention and response methods. To prevent certain incidents, it suggests building strong relationships with students. It also urges schools to offer more targeted resources like counseling and safety plans and encourage students to lead programs like Students Against Violence Everywhere or Bring Change to Mind. While drafting response methods, the article suggests inviting someone from the counseling and mental health department to join the conversations. It discusses the below best practices to incorporate into your crisis response plan.
1. Student-guardian reunification strategy: Calling students and staff who were absent to ensure they are safe
2. Triage: Identify all students who need help or counseling
3. Post-crisis awareness and personal care: Ensure counselors and other staff who are taking care of students after the event are also taking care of themselves
National Education Association (NEA) also developed its own School Crisis Guide. In their guide, they offer a step-by-step outline of what to do before, during, and after any school or community crisis. The guide covers the four below points:
- Prevent: Avoid incidents if possible or lessen the harm done by unavoidable ones
- Prepare: Plan for worst-case scenarios
- Respond: Develop steps to minimize harm to people and property
- Recover: Restoring teaching environments after an incident
How can SchoolInfo help your crisis communication planning?
The safety and well-being of our schools are one of our top priorities. We want to provide you with the tools that can help your communication during and after an unexpected event. Below are some of the features of our digital communication suite that can be utilized in your communication planning.
With a branded mobile app by SchoolInfo, you can quickly and easily send out emergency messages to notify everyone in your community. During a crisis, you may not have the time to draft a clear and concise message, so I recommend planning ahead. As NEA’s guide noted, plan for worst-case scenarios. Write up templates or messages to keep on hand that you can send out during an emergency. Most likely, you will not need to use these messages, but it’s important to have them ready to go if an incident does arise. By drafting a message prior to any situation, you won’t have to stress about what to say in the moment and your community will get notified sooner.
While recovering, Mass Notification will be a useful tool to keep your community updated. Through push notifications, you can alert families about important information following a crisis. Keeping everyone updated throughout the recovery journey will help you receive fewer calls with questions about what is going on allowing administrators to continue to focus on restoring the learning environment.
Anyone with a branded mobile app can use the Tip Line. The Tip Line tool promotes campus safety, integrity, and helps to prevent bullying. Students can submit anonymous tips to report concerns about bullying, academic integrity, or suspicious behavior. Tips are securely sent to the proper administrator's email and can include photos, videos, and optional contact information.
After a crisis occurs, students and families may have questions or want a safe place to talk about what happened. The Conversations feature of the branded mobile app by SchoolInfo is 2-way digital messaging for schools done right. It opens the line of communication allowing members of your community to feel safe and heard.
Share! is a communication hub that links your app, website, social media, email, and more, all in one place. It allows you to share the same update across multiple channels with one click. Not having to go to different platforms to share the same message saves you time. This is especially important during and after a crisis, allowing administrators more time to focus on executing their crisis response plan.
This can be an uncomfortable topic to discuss, but it's an important one. At SchoolInfo, we want to provide schools and districts with digital communication tools that make administrators' lives easier. If you're interested in learning more about how a branded mobile app can help your school or district in a time of need, request a meeting with someone on our team today!
