School Tornado Planning – Separate Action Steps for Tornado Watch and Tornado Warning in your School Crisis Plans

We review many school crisis plans each year.  There are recurrent patterns involving opportunities for improvement that we notice.  I have found one of these patterns in several school crisis plans I reviewed in recent weeks.  This involves lumping the same action steps for tornado warning and tornado watch into one set of action steps.  Barring unusual circumstances, schools typically have different sets of action steps for each of these different situations.  Attempting to use the same set of action steps for both could prove to be dangerous.  If your schools are in an area where tornadoes can occur and the severe weather protocols do not provide different action steps for tornado warning and tornado watch, it would be a good idea to work with local fire service and/or emergency management personnel to update your plans.