Columbine 13 Years Later

April 20, 2012 by

On the 13th anniversary of the Columbine school tragedy, the events of that day remain as present as they did back in 1999.  A new documentary by a student who was at Columbine High School on the day of the shooting reminds us that basic preparedness and crisis stress management are critical if we want to be ready for any level of crisis.  Several years ago another student who was at the shooting directed a film called “April Showers” that gives great insight to what the event felt and looked like for a student that was there.

 I recently keynoted the California Association of School Transportation Officials Annual Conference in Sacramento, California.  As with every state and national pupil transportation conference I have presented at, I found the conference to be dominated by highly motivated and dedicated people who care deeply about students.  As is typical of these types of conferences, I was truly touched by the comments of many of the school bus drivers, transportation supervisors and directors I met.  I was invited to attend the conference banquet and am glad I did.  Several of the attendees at my table shared truly touching comments about the need for school bus drivers to focus on not only the safety of the students they transport each day, but for the need of drivers to serve as role models and mentors to them. 

One story that was disturbing to me fits a pattern with similar stories that have been related to me hundreds of times over the years by school bus drivers, food service personnel, custodians and other support personnel.  Though each situation is different, there is a common theme whether I am in California, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Hawaii, Florida or New York – some school employees view other school employees as low status personnel who are not smart enough to take action.

This particular example is a good one to help school administrators understand just how dangerous arrogance among school employees can be.  After the dinner, the supervisor for a large district related a story from when he had served as a school bus driver.  He was driving a large school bus with seating capacity for 96 students on a field trip to Los Angeles from his community.  He related that there were two other buses and that the drivers were concerned that cars in the downtown area where they were going to park could easily hit students.  The drivers clearly instructed all students to not cross between any of the buses and to use a specific crosswalk to cross the street.  When he stopped a group of students who he saw attempting to cross between two buses and made them go to the proper crosswalk, a teacher challenged him on his actions in front of the students.  He told me that when he explained why he had taken this action and how dangerous it was for the students to cross the street between the buses, the teacher told him that he was “only a school bus driver” and that she wanted the students to cross between the school buses.  Fortunately, he instructed the teacher that she did not have the authority to do this and he insisted that the students cross in the appropriate crosswalk and the students complied. 

I know there are two sides to every story.  But if this situation occurred as it was related to me, there is a serious problem.  To have a teacher countermand a safety procedure of another employee who has more experience in the field is inappropriate.   To publicly do so in front of students without a compelling reason is even worse.  To do so in violation of the law is yet more egregious.  But to do so in a manner that is humiliating and arrogant is really pushing the limits of human decency.  Such actions and attitudes are far too prevalent in school schools.  I witnessed this form of arrogance from time to time and it is truly disturbing.  To assume that a school bus driver is a less important person than a school teacher is nothing short of ignorance combined with arrogance.

On March 2, 2012, in Henryville, Indiana School Bus Driver Angel Perry had eleven kids on her bus ahead of a dangerous tornado.  She was looking for a safe place to shelter her children, and made the decision to return to the school.  On the radio, her voice remained calm as she instructed her kids on how to protect themselves, and got a student count.  Upon arriving at the school, she counted all the children off the bus and was the last person off of her bus.  Three minutes later, an EF4 tornado struck the school, sending her bus flying over 200 feet across a highway into a restaurant.  

Far from being “just a bus driver”, Angel Perry’s actions showed her to be a true professional who put the lives of her children ahead of her own.  She is a fine example for any teacher to emulate.  This is a great reminder that we all need to work together and not forget to include everyone in our planning and training efforts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Do your practices match your procedures?

April 18, 2012 by

Avoiding Tragedy and Litigation – Do your practices match your procedures?

Failing to follow logical school safety procedures is one way to increase the risk that someone will be hurt in a safety incident. It is also one of the best ways to be successfully litigated. One of the more effective tactics by a plaintiff’s attorney in school safety litigation is to show that a custom policy or practice was not followed that would or could have averted the tragedy. One of the best ways to avoid school safety litigation is to prevent anyone from being harmed by adopting, effectively communicating and consistently following proper safety practices. All three of these components are needed for a safe school.

Understanding that no amount of emotional suffering, litigation, and other common long lasting and difficult outcomes from a child’s preventable death at a school will ever return the lost joy and happiness to family members, as well as other students and staff, should always shape and guide the discussion of life safety issues.

School leaders and staff should all work to create and maintain a culture of safety. This requires not only the creation of effective practices, but efforts to clearly communicate them to staff, students, parents and guardians. This also requires efforts to instill these core values into the day-to-day activities. Taking the time to establish effective written guidelines that can be realistically implemented by staff, students and those who drop off and pick up students each day is an excellent practice. From a functional reliability standpoint as well as from a perspective of civil liability, having written or implied policies that match appropriate practices is important.

Take the time to develop good school safety procedures, policies and practices. Follow up on these efforts to invest the time to develop clear and achievable written guidelines when it is appropriate to do so, and then find the time to make the reality in your school match these written guidelines. The precious young lives you have been entrusted to care for deserve no less attention to detail.

Note: This blog has been posted for Michael Dorn while he is in a rural region of Mexico with no internet or phone service. He may be delayed in responding to e-mails relating to this blog.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Who Should Make The 911 call?

April 18, 2012 by

 

 

Photo by Rachel Wilson – Safe Havens International Video ©2011

 

Careful thought and appropriate training should address the issue of which campus employees should make calls to 911 when an emergency occurs. There should be no assumptions on the part of school administrators or rank and file employees as to the most effective way to handle 911 calls for life and death assistance. It is not uncommon for school employees to lack formal guidance on when they should call 911 during a life and death emergency situation. The wide variety of school designs and the ways they are operated at different times of the day make it impossible to have an effective standardized national approach to this seemingly simple issue.

Normally, it is best for calls to 911 to be made by school office personnel rather than employees faced with an emergency in other parts of the school. There are several reasons for this:

  • It is often difficult for staff to perform life-saving actions while they are on the phone with 911 dispatch personnel for several minutes or more.

  • If a staff member in a remote part of the building calls 911 directly, the office may not find out that there is an emergency for several minutes. This can cause a significant delay in ordering protective actions such as lockdown for the rest of the school’s occupants. This approach can also cause a delay in school crisis team members responding to the incident scene to provide assistance.

  • School offices are often staffed by multiple personnel who can manage several critical tasks at one time.

At the same time, we recommend that all school staff be specifically trained and empowered to call 911 directly if doing so will reduce the risk to students and/or staff. For example, if a staff member is unable to contact the office or there is no one in that office at the time of day the incident occurs.

Regardless of the specific situations in each school, it can be extremely important that school and area public safety officials have effective discussions on this topic. These discussions should yield workable approaches that can and should be incorporated into staff development efforts. These efforts should be geared to achieving the end result that congruent understanding between the rank and file employees, to line supervisors and middle managers, as well as among department heads and the top leadership in the organization is achieved.

A good litmus test is that if someone posed a series of several life and death scenarios to every employee in the organization, the majority of responses as to whom they would call for emergency assistance should be consistent. If experience indicates that this level of consistency would not surface, this might be a good opportunity for improvement.

Sometimes the simple things in life are among the most important. How the initial call for emergency assistance is made can be a life or death aspect of even fairly routine emergency situations. Taking the time to look at how critical information will flow in the first critical minutes of an emergency may be just as important as the technology available to communicate during crisis situations. Though it is often relatively inexpensive in terms of cost and time to address the issue of who calls 911, the failure to do so can be rather costly.

Note: This blog has been posted for Michael Dorn while he is in a rural region of Mexico with no internet or phone service. He may be delayed in responding to e-mails relating to this blog.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »