New Specialized Training Package on Developing and Enhancing Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) With Your Community Partners

Collaboration is an essential component of preparedness (safety, security, and emergency management) programs and processes. Multidisciplinary planning teams benefit from the collective wisdom, diverse experiences, and unique perspectives of their stakeholders. Key community partners, such as law enforcement agencies, local public health departments, volunteer service organizations, and others, bring expertise, processes, and resources that can elevate an education agency’s preparedness capacity and support coordination of the community’s prevention, mitigation, protection, and especially response and recovery efforts. Important elements of relationship building include information sharing, resource management and mutual aid, and the creation of MOUs.

To aid K-12 education agencies with the creation and enhancement of MOUs with key community partners, the REMS TA Center created a new module of the Specialized Training Packages program on this important topic. This 60-minute training piece is for you to use to train your school community(ies) and help them develop a greater understanding of what MOUs are, when they are relevant, how to create MOUs with community partners or enhance existing MOUs with community partners, and why MOUs strengthen their emergency operations plans (EOPs) and enhance their overall preparedness and school safety efforts through collaboration. The training concludes with a prompt for audience members to apply the principles learned during the training to their own schools and school districts. Download the Specialized Training Package today.

Overview on Specialized Training Packages

We created these packages to support YOU in your in-person and online training efforts and to supplement your training programs. These packages are intended for you to use to train your teams and contain training presentations with speakers notes, instructions, resource lists, and, in some cases, tabletop exercises. Download a package, and use its materials to deliver in-person or online trainings to your colleagues on a variety of school emergency management topics. Or you may review these materials on your own to learn more about a topic. Did you know that we even created a cover page and table of contents for all training packages? We currently offer training packages on over 13 topics, listed below and available for download from our Specialized Training Packages Web page.

• Emergency Management Functions
  • Continuity of Operations Planning
  • Developing a Recovery Annex
  • Family Reunification Planning
  • Responding to Bereavement and Loss
     
• Hazards and Threats
  • Infectious Disease Planning
  • Developing a Food Contamination Annex
     
• Planning Principles and Basics
  • Large Event Planning
  • Integrating the Needs of Students and Staff with Disabilities and Other Access and Functional Needs
  • Understanding Educator Resilience & Developing a Self-Care Plan
  • Overview of Six Step Planning Process
     
• REMS TA Center Products and Services
  • REMS TA Center: An Overview of Emergency Management Resources for K-12 Stakeholders
  • An Overview of the Features & Functions of EOP ASSIST 2.0 for State Agency Hosts and Their Stakeholders
  • An Overview of the Features & Functions of EOP ASSIST 2.0 for School & School District Hosts and Their Stakeholders
     

Supplemental Exercise and Training Packages
The REMS TA Center has developed additional exercise and training packages that may be used to strengthen EOPs and identify gaps and weaknesses or to bolster youth preparedness and engagement at a school or school district. These packages vary in their contents. Use these packages to lead a tabletop exercise or start a Teen Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. Download the Emergency Exercises Package or the Teen CERT Toolkit from our Specialized Training Packages Web page.

• Emergency Exercises Package – This contains an introduction to emergency exercises, tabletop exercise instructions, tabletop exercise scenarios/injects and podcasts, and accompanying resources. In this package, we focus on two scenarios: power outage and an infectious disease outbreak.
   
• Teen CERT Toolkit – The resources within this toolkit were prepared by Susan Graves of Oregon’s Lincoln County School District for use in her school district’s Teen CERT program. All the resources are customizable for any practitioner who wishes to use them for a new or existing Teen CERT program.

The REMS TA Center thanks you and all of our school safety partners for your continuous commitment to school communities every day. As you plan and prepare for the fall academic year, please remember that MOUs are critical resources during emergencies. Also, please do not hesitate to reach out to the REMS TA Center, your National School Safety Center, if you need any assistance or support related to MOUs or any other topic within school safety, security, and emergency management.