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Canyon College

COURSE SYLLABUS:  Crisis Management for Schools

1. To better understand the importance of emergency planning in schools.
2. To develop a clear understanding of the elements of a school emergency plan.
3. To review and apply proven prevention and mitigation strategies.
4. To successfully integrate prevention and mitigation strategies into the school emergency plan.
5. To develop an emergency preparedness strategy.
6. To learn and apply the fundamentals of emergency training, education, exercises and evaluation.
7. To develop the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to integrate the emergency preparedness strategy into the safe schools plan.
8. To review and apply the steps needed to create a successful response plan.
9. To successfully integrate the response plan into the school emergency plan.
10. To develop strategies for school crisis recovery.
11. To effectively integrate the school recovery strategy into the school emergency plan.

1. When was the plan written?
2. Who was involved in writing it?
3. When is the last time it was updated?
4. Where is it kept?
5. Is it in hard copy? Electronic format? Is it secured on the school Intranet?
6. Have the police and fire departments reviewed it?
7. Do they have a copy?
8. Is it color coded?
9. Does it use an All Hazard’s Approach?
10. Does it utilize ICS/NIMS?
11. Have students been involved in designing the plan?
12. Have teachers been involved in designing the plan?
13. Has the plan been utilized during a Crisis Management for Schools table top exercise?
14. Was there a lessons learned/ hot wash conducted?
15. Has the plan been utilized during a full scale exercise involving police, EMT and local fire departments?
16. Was there a lessons learned/ hot wash conducted?
17. Has the plan been utilized in an actual emergency during the last year?
18. Was there a lessons learned/ hot wash conducted?
19. What do you like best about your school emergency plan?
20. What do you like least about your school emergency plan?
21. If you had the authority, how would you improve the school emergency plan?

2 points for each spelling error.
2 points for each mistake in grammar.
2 points for each mistake in punctuation.

20 points for report.
100 points for essay questions

105 -120 = A
89 - 105 = B
75 - 88 = C
70 - 74 = D
0 - 69 = F

Question 1: Why is safety the foundation of learning?
Question 2: What are the four components of a safe school plan?
Question 3: Provide a brief description of each component?
Question 4: Why is it important to put risk into context?
Question 5: Who should be involved in school security planning and why?

1. Who should help you with your emergency management plan?
2. What should be their roles?
3. List all the potential threats that can face a school. Are you prepared for a terrorist attack? Did you learn anything from the 911 attacks?
4. Does your plan apply the lessons learned from pages 37-44? Please list those lessons in an outline format?

1. What are the most likely threats facing your school?
2. What should you look for when conducting a school site assessment?
3. When is it acceptable to accept losses at a school?
4. Do you believe that training teachers on the warning signs of student violence/suicide is a practical prevention strategy? Defend your position.
5. What is the problem caused by school administrators who fail to report incidents to police?

1. Why should we develop written outlines of mitigation and prevention strategies?
2. What is the benefit of policy restructuring?
3. Go to page 100 and provide a one sentence status report for each category as applied to your school.
4. What is the importance of including parents and community members in safe school planning?
5. List at least three important concerns for pupil transportation safety.

1. Invest at least 30 minutes and answer yes/no to the assessment questions on pages 106-107.
2. How do you staff a crisis response team?
3. Who should be on a systems team?
4. Which units should be included within the Crisis Response Team?
5. What is the job of the incident commander?
6. List the emergency preparedness action steps for a field trip.

1. List the key points for training.
2. List the sources of training for your school system.
3. Provide a short essay explaining the differences between a seminar, drill, table top exercise, functional exercise and a full scale exercise.
4. List the steps needed to plan an exercise.
5. What are some of the issues that need to be addressed when developing a training scenario?
6. Design a template for evaluating a school emergency management exercise for your school system.

1. What is meant by the multidisciplinary approach towards emergency management preparedness?
2. List the often overlooked community partners.
3. Describe the elements of the all hazard approach.
4. List the types of off -school property incidents that can affect school safety.
5. Outline/list all of the protocols that should be addressed in a school emergency management plan.
6. Describe the benefits of flip charts and signal cards.
7. Go though the checklist on pages 199-200 and evaluate school’s emergency management plan. List the areas not addressed by your current plan.

1. What is ICS and what are the benefits of this system?
2. List the general staff functions of ICS and NIMS.
3. What is the difference between ICS and NIMS?
4. What are the elements for controlling a situation?
5. Describe the responsibilities of an incident commander?
6. What is the role of the search and rescue team?
7. What are the challenges of dealing with a mass casualty incident?

1. List the important features of ICS.
2. Does your school have an incident tracking system? If yes-how does it apply to ICS.
3. What are the benefits of Job Assignment Sheets?
4. What is the problem with immediately cleaning and broken glass after a school shooting?

1. Describe the Sanford Model of Initial trauma Intervention in Schools. Is it still applicable today? Why? Why Not?