Free School Safety Fidelity Webinar

July 13, 2017 by

Mike Dorn presents a webinar.

I had the opportunity to present a webinar for my editor at School Planning and Management Magazine this week. The one-hour presentation titled How Much Fidelity Does Your School Safety Approach Have? is available at no cost until October 11 on the School Planning and Management website: https://webspm.com/Home.aspx

I have enjoyed the opportunity to write a column on school security for School Planning and Management for more than eighteen years now and have had the pleasure of keynoting conferences and presenting webinars for the magazine as well. The magazine has had a regular focus on school safety issues with a wide array of topical areas and authors over the years. I have been blessed to work with Jerry Enderle for most of the eighteen years. Though I can honestly state that I have never had a bad editor with any of the magazines and book publishers I have written for, Jerry is one of the most pleasant people I have ever worked with. I greatly appreciated the chance to work with Jerry again and the time so many participants took to learn more about this important and timely topic.

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Emergency Evacuation Kits

June 5, 2017 by

                Emergency Evacuation Kit

I am pretty sure that one of the first magazine columns I wrote more than twenty years ago described the importance of emergency evacuation kits. I find these kits to be just as important today as they were then. I still find schools today that do not have these valuable emergency preparedness assets. Known by a variety of names, emergency evacuation kits contain the bare essential items and information school officials need to manage a crisis event when it is not possible to go back into their school or when structural damage occurs after occupants are sheltered.

 
Though I have seen a variety of commercial variants, the best quality emergency evacuation kits I have seen have all been assembled by school and public safety officials. I have also seen a variety of containers used including soft bags, plastic file boxes and even rolling trash cans. I have found that rolling backpacks with collapsible handles are perhaps the most practical option as they can easily be carried down a flight of stairs, over snow-covered ground or rolled on pavement for extended evacuations.

 
I have always suggested that clients consider having two duplicate kits stored in separate locations in the building with one kit being located away from the main office. This can be important during a hostage situation or tornado strike which affects the main office. As with other critical emergency preparedness measures, it is a good idea for backup personnel to be designated to get each kit out in an emergency. I also recommend that kits be taken outside during evacuation drills and taken to shelter areas when sheltering for severe weather or hazardous materials incidents.

 
Emergency evacuation kits by any name usually offer a good return on the investment of time and fiscal resources required to develop and maintain them.

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School Safety Fidelity: April 2017 Issue of School Safety Monthly Now Available

April 28, 2017 by

School Safety Fidelity

This month’s issue of school safety monthly is an interesting topic that spans all that we do in keeping our schools safe. While the concept is as fundamental as the all-hazards approach to emergency management, it is sometimes easy to forget the basics. School safety fidelity is as simple as making sure we do what we say we are going to do. This can manifest itself in different ways, from a failure to follow proscribed student supervision policies to the use of active shooter programs that breed inconsistency by design. Having practices, policies and training that are mismatched is one of the easiest ways to create liability and increase actual risk.

Room for improvement in school safety practices and procedures to enhance fidelity can be found in many areas. From basics like student supervision to more complex issues like active shooter response and mandatory reporting for child sexual abuse, mismatched policies and practices can cause injury and death when not addressed. In actuality, we should be taking a closer look at everything we do during the periodic review and updating of our plans.

The good news is that like most obstacles, this one can be overcome. There are a number of ways to identify gaps in school safety fidelity. There are also several ways to close these gaps and enhance school safety with sometimes very little actual effort. In many cases the answer is a simple adjustment of practice or training update. Read this month’s issue of School Safety Monthly: School Safety Fidelity to find out how.

Click the image below to download the April 2017 issue of School Safety Monthly:

School Safety Fidelity: April 2017

For past issues of School Safety Monthly as well as archived issues of our electronic journal The Safety Net, visit our newsletter archives page here:

The Safety Net Volume 3 Issue 2

Newsletter & eJournal Archives Page

Filed Under: Chris Dorn, Safe Havens Blog
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