I just finished evaluating school crisis plans for two different school districts and observed the same common but potentially deadly planning flaw in both of them – many employees who are listed in the plan as responsible for performing life – saving action steps are not issued the plan component where these steps are listed.
This is an extremely common and problematic issue for school crisis planning. One of the reasons we emphasize the need for role – specific planning is that this approach is one of the most reliable ways to get information to the employees who will actually need to implement critical action steps in an emergency. While this can also be accomplished with training and properly designed drills, few school organizations can afford to put staff through several weeks of training to provide them an appropriate depth of knowledge that would enable them to perform correctly during drills and to handle a wide array of crisis situations without such written guidance.
Taking the time to verify that employees are provided the information they need to enable them to perform the action steps they are expected to perform is a wise investment of time and could easily save a life one day.