SCHOOL SAFETY IS A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

If you haven’t been there yet, it’s coming: your school PR response to an emergency event. It can range from a water outage that may last a week, a weather event that damages one or more buildings, a bus accident or by far the worst, an active shooter on a campus where lives are lost. District communication staff have the unique position in a school district where they must know about the events of every campus and the mission and direction of every department as they can be asked at any moment to provide information about any and every aspect of what is going on (and why) at a school or district.

Responding to media requests is an everyday occurrence. Responding to an emergency means school district communication staff must be prepared with clear, concise information about the situation and what the district does to prevent, mitigate, prepare for and recover from an event during heightened stress levels of staff, leaders, students, parents and community members. Can you, today, answer how your district or school is keeping students and staff safe? Do you know what the response plan is for any hazardous event and what measures your district has in place for recovery? Knowing the information in your district’s multi-hazard emergency operations plan can help you keep calm while doing the job of responding to a hazardous event.

First things first, school safety is multidisciplinary and multi-hazard in nature. This means that it is not one person’s job to ensure your schools are safe. It is a shared responsibility. School safety involves not just educators and schools, but parents, students, first responders, mental health professionals, policymakers, and community leaders understanding the various hazards your schools can face. No one panacea ensures a safe and healthy school environment. All stakeholders must be engaged in how to prevent, mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from any type of incident that could arise. Your district is legally required to have plans in place and a multidisciplinary committee to ensure these plans are followed, communicated and trained on to ensure that all involved (including students) are prepared for and know how to respond to emergencies.

The Top 5 School Safety Mandates

As a communications staff member, you need to be aware of the following top five school safety mandates and understand how they work in your district so you can better respond to any event. If you know of misalignment in your district’s plans, it is your responsibility to bring the issue to the attention of your district leaders so that the best plan is developed, trained, and drilled on to ensure students and staff are safe and secure.

1. School Safety and Security Committee: Your district must have a school safety and security committee that has multiple stakeholders listed in law (Texas Education Code 37.109). The committee is responsible for updating the multi-hazard emergency operations plan and reviewing district and campus audit findings. Do you sit on this committee? If not, it is a best practice that someone in the communications department serves on this committee. The committee is required to meet, at a minimum, three times a year. This is the team that works to ensure all five phases in your district’s emergency posture are addressed: prevention, mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery.

2. Multi-hazard Emergency Operations Plan: Your district has a multi-hazard emergency operations plan (EOP) which includes a hazard analysis specific to your district as well as a chain of command in communication and how, and on what, your district will train and drill (Texas Education Code 37.108). Do you know what this plan includes? Do you know where your role falls in the plan? This plan is reviewed by the Texas School Safety Center to ensure it meets all the criteria, but it is the responsibility of your district’s School Safety and Security Committee to ensure the plan is communicated, trained, drilled and updated each year and after events through after-action reviews.

3. School Safety Audits: Audits are learning tools to assist districts on where they stand regarding their school safety posture. Every instructional and noninstructional facility is required by law (Texas Education Code 37.108) to be audited at least once every three years. What were the findings of your last audit? What was done or is being done to address the findings? New this school year the Texas School Safety Center also conducted Intruder Detection Audits as keeping all external doors locked became a requirement during the 22-23 school year. What were the findings, if any, of your Intruder Detection Audit(s) and what has your district done to improve its safety posture?

4. Drills:

There are annual mandatory school drills (such as lockdown, evacuation and fire drills) and rules designating the number of rules and procedures for evacuating schools during an emergency (Texas Education Code 37.114). How are your schools performing during these drills? Are after-action reviews being done to change or tweak response actions by students and staff? Do you share with your community what drills and how often students will take part in them? These are all best practices. Having a designated reunification site is currently not mandated in law, but it is considered a best practice. A reunification site takes a lot of time to plan and prepare for, and school communication staff play a key role in this planning. If you don’t know if your district has one, now is the time to ask and inform yourself of the plan and your role.

5. School Behavioral Threat Assessment: School Behavioral Threat Assessment is a preventative system meant to intervene with individuals posing a risk of harm to self or others and get them off the pathway to violence. It is based on research on U.S. school shootings that shows that most school shooters had seriously concerned others in their lives prior to the attack. Every campus in your district must be served by a school behavioral threat assessment team and the team makeup is legally required (Texas Education Code 37.115). When a student is found to be on the pathway, the team proposes interventions based on your school and district’s community resources. Key to this system is students and staff knowing to say something when they see or hear something which requires your district to train both students and staff what to report, to whom and how. It is common for school district communication professionals to have to respond to threats made public by students or other people and knowing what your district has in place to support and respond to these threats is crucial to your communications response.

Following these five school safety mandates, along with many other measures specific to each district, is how districts are keeping students and staff safe every day. Each district is unique in their safety posture as each district has different programs, staff and resources dedicated to this area, and it is key to know and understand what your district does in its entirety to protect schools, including school safety personnel. Your role as a communications staff member is essential to your district’s school safety posture. Most importantly, if you think or know that a plan may or may not work for any reason, it is imperative that you speak with your district leaders. Ensuring your district and schools have a strong safety posture takes everyone knowing the emergency operations plan, preparing by drilling and training on the plan, and identifying and addressing weaknesses in the plan. At some point, you will be asked to respond to an emergency situation and having knowledge of both the plan and your role in the plan is crucial to ensuring a smooth communications plan and response.

The Texas School Safety Center provides training and resources on these five and many other safety topics, including school-based law enforcement and mental health support in schools. The Texas School Safety Center serves as the central clearinghouse for school safety in Texas, and the training, guidance, and resources we provide are informed by the latest best practices. Best of all, our trainings and resources are free for Texas school personnel. Please check out our website at txssc.txstate.edu for all our trainings, toolkits and other resources including our new safety podcast where these safety topics and best practices are discussed with school district administrators.

Dr. Celina Bley was the 2002 TSPRA Rookie of the Year and worked in School PR and Operations for 18 years in districts in the Central Texas region. She worked her way up from Public Information Officer to Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations for a large 6A district, where she oversaw school safety. She began working with the Texas School Safety Center in 2019 as the Associate Director of Training and Education for the state and this article is a synopsis of her keynote on school safety given at the 2023 TSPRA Conference. TSPRA members are always welcome and encouraged to contact Celina for any questions, comments or inquiries regarding school safety and communication at Celina.bley@txstate.edu.