Helpful steps to consider when creating an emergency preparedness plan for your school
How to prepare for an emergency
Here are some steps to consider when creating an Emergency Preparedness plan:
- Prevention – Policies, procedures, and best practices instituted in each school. Deterrence operations and security systems are put in place to prevent the emergency from occurring in the first place.
- Mitigation – Refers to measures that prevent a school emergency, reduce the chance of an emergency happening, or reduce the damaging effects of unavoidable emergencies. Typical mitigation measures include establishing building policies, procedures, and best practices.
3. Preparedness – Activities increase the school’s emergency team’s ability to respond when an emergency occurs. Typical preparedness measures include developing a plan with school resource officers and first responders, training for response personnel and designated school employees, conducting emergency exercises to reinforce training and test capabilities, and presenting all-hazards education campaigns.
- Response – Actions carried out immediately before, during, and after an emergency, which aims to save lives and alleviate suffering. For example, response actions may include activating the emergency operations center, evacuating threatened students and staff, creating designated meet-up locations providing mass care, emergency rescue, and medical care while having a plan for all emergency responders that will be required.
- Recovery – Actions taken to return a school to normal or near-normal conditions, including the accounting of all students and staff. Making sure all students and staff are reunified with their parents, guardian, or team.
How iVisitor Management and MySchool iD can improve your emergency preparedness plans
iVisitor Management, coupled with MySchool iD™, are powerful tools to assist in your emergency preparedness plans. These solutions can act as a preventative measure to prevent emergencies and will assist during and after emergencies.
2. Mitigation – iVisitor Management automatically screens all visitors against a national sex offender registry and your custom banned person list. If a visitor matches a profile, your security team will be alerted. MySchool iD also allows any user to submit emergency and non-emergency alerts to school officials with their cell phones.
3. Preparedness – By using MySchool iD, you can immediately kick off a chain of prepared steps following your emergency plan to respond to the specific emergency at hand. This will notify the proper personnel of the school and contact the appropriate authorities, following the proper procedures for that particular emergency that you have in place.
4. Response – Once the emergency is detected and immediate steps are taken, staff can communicate through MySchool iD to communicate with students and staff. Your MySchool iD will show all reported info, including whether students and staff are safe or if they need help.
5. Recovery – Once the emergency is addressed and the immediate threat is over, the process of recovery can begin. iVisitor Management can assist with the process of student reunification with parents and guardians, and MySchool iD can communicate with school personnel to mark themselves safe or if any help is needed.
If you have any questions regarding iVisitor Management and MySchool iD for your emergency preparedness plans, please call us at 800-890-1000 and choose option #4 or email sales@identakid.com.
Sources:
https://www.schoolsafety.gov/protect-and-mitigate/emergency-planning