It was an absolute joy to work with the staff from the Phoenix Country Day School and the Phoenix Police Department last week.  The school is a truly first-class independent school and the Phoenix Police Officers who work at the school each day were consummate and dedicated professionals.  The school has been staffed by Phoenix Police Officers for more than two decades and has worked diligently to provide a warm, caring, and safe environment over the years.   While we were able to offer a number of suggestions to further enhance school safety, security and emergency preparedness, the current safety efforts of school staff and the Phoenix Police Department were already truly impressive.

I have had the pleasure to work with a number of the nation’s finest independent schools and was deeply impressed with the thoughtful long-term approach to safety at this school.  I am also grateful that both school and police personnel were so eager to learn new ways to improve upon the many successful safety strategies they have implemented over the years.  It was truly an honor and a pleasure to visit this beautiful school and to work with a team of true professionals. 

A while back, I came up with an analogy that a number of folks have told me has been helpful to them. I thought it might be useful to share it here.  It can be easy for people who have not had the experience of being threatened or attacked with a weapon to have unrealistic expectations.  For example, for more than a decade, we have been posing scenarios for school employees and asking them to either verbally walk us through what they would do to address the scenarios or to physically demonstrate for us in real time what they would do. 

We have found that it is quite common for school staff to be unable to secure their work area rapidly when we do this with a scenario that would require a lockdown.  For example, just in the past few months, I have encountered many school office staff and classroom teachers who were not able to properly implement a lockdown in less than 30 seconds when posed with scenario where it is clearly appropriate for them do implement a lockdown.  In a number of instances, I have timed school staff who took more than 90 seconds to secure their work area.  These same school employees have typically participated in several or more lockdown drills in the current school year but are unable to perform the basic steps to accomplish a lockdown fast enough to protect themselves and others if an armed person were in close proximity.

When I keynote or work with clients, I have had good success with the submarine door analogy to help explain how dangerous these delayed reactions can be.  I simply ask what would happen if the crew of a submarine did not close the door to the sub until they had submerged to a depth of 100 feet.  The obvious answer is that the submarine would sink.  In the same manner, school staff who are not prepared to make, communicate, and implement the decision to lockdown in the first critical seconds of an act of violence will be more prone to implement protective actions too late to protect people.  While the analogy resonates best with most people for lockdown situations, it is equally applicable for medical emergencies, fires, tornadoes and other potentially life-threatening situations.

This simple analogy has helped many people better understand how fast staff must be able to react in a life-threatening situation.  I have had excellent feedback on this analogy.  As soon as we get a chance, we will be developing a free online video using the submarine analogy in concert with our new book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  I will post a blog to announce this free resource once we have it on the web site.  In the meantime, this analogy may be helpful in your efforts to improve school safety.

During our school security assessments, we often run a variety of school crisis simulations in a one-on-one fashion.  Over the past decade we have noticed a variety of patterns of concern.  Most consistently observed with administrators and front office staff who have made announcements in concert with drills in the past, this is a type of stress reaction that can easily occur under field conditions because of the manner in which drills are conducted. 

When a school administrator has made announcements for drills multiple times, which include references to the announcement being part of a drill, it is easy for this to occur.  A simple strategy to reduce the chances that this will occur is to have a second person come on the intercom once the instruction to implement the protocol has been announced and state that the event is only a drill.  For example, one staff member might announce “All students and staff, implement severe weather sheltering procedures now, I repeat, all students and staff, implement severe weather sheltering procedures now” followed by a separate announcement made by a different staff member stating “all students and staff, this is a drill, I repeat, all students and staff, this is a drill.”  This simple approach can help reduce the chances that staff will announce that a drill is being conducted during a real emergency.  This can be important because staff may become panicked if they are told an event is a drill when they learn that they are experiencing an actual event.