The REMS TA Center invites K-12 schools, school districts, institutions of higher education (IHEs), regional education agencies, and state education agencies, with their community partners, to engage in planning and preparedness activities throughout September in observance of National Preparedness Month. This awareness campaign is an opportunity to engage your whole school or campus community and build its capacity for mitigating, preventing, protecting your community from, responding to, and recovering from an emergency event. Use the social media toolkit, shareable content, and Public Service Announcements provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency all month long.

The 2021 theme is “Prepare to Protect. Preparing for disasters is protecting everyone you love.” Each week will have a different focus: (1) Make a Plan, (2) Build a Kit, (3) Prepare for Disasters, and (4) Teach Youth About Preparedness.

• Week 1: Consider taking an online course or delivering your own training on emergency operations plan (EOP) development with the REMS TA Center’s training materials.
• Week 2: Conduct an inventory of your emergency supplies and go-kits.
• Week 3: Host a tabletop exercise with our Emergency Exercises Package.
• Week 4: Watch a REMS TA Center Webinar on the Teen Community Emergency Response Team and download our toolkit. Share any tools you used or created throughout the month through the REMS TA Center Tool Box.

The REMS TA Center recently launched NEW topic-specific resources Web pages to support K-12 schools, school districts, and IHEs, with their community partners, with safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness. Practitioners and teams can now easily access resources from the REMS TA Center, the U.S. Department of Education, and Federal partners on three critical emergency management functions: rapid assessment, recovery, and shelter-in place.

• Rapid Assessment: One key period is when an IHE becomes aware of an occurring or impending emergency. Use the resources on this page to help develop, revise, or enhance the Rapid Assessment Annex that addresses how the IHE will make decisions regarding the type and scale of an incident, the response needed, activation of any additional annexes, and protective actions to be taken.
• Recovery: When it comes to planning for recovery, the goal is to return to a sense of “normalcy” and restore the educational entity to a safe and supportive environment. Use the resources on this page to help develop, revise, or enhance the Recovery Annex.
• Shelter-In-Place: At times, a threat or hazard may exist outdoors, and it may be safer for students and staff to remain inside a building or room. Use the resources on this page to help develop, revise, or enhance the Shelter-in-Place Annex.

These three new pages join an entire section on the REMS TA Center Website that houses resources for eight other emergency management functions, hazards and threats, and planning basics and principles.

The Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans defines school climate as “a range of campus conditions, including safety, relationships and engagement, and the environment, that may influence student learning and well-being.” A culture and climate assessment is an important tool for measuring school climate, as it helps evaluate student, staff, and family connectedness to the school as well as both positive and problem behaviors. Measuring school climate allows for stakeholders to understand the school community’s perceptions of school safety and provides them with localized data that they can use to make informed decisions about school climate and identifying threats and hazards to address in the school EOP.

The REMS TA Center Website houses a variety of resources to support the process of conducting a culture and climate assessment. Read steps that schools can take to help promote a positive school climate and improve student health and safety via the School Climate and Emergencies At a Glance Web page. The REMS TA Center researched and wrote the School Culture and Climate Assessments Fact Sheet, which describes methods to measure school climate and create a school climate improvement plan. Sample culture and climate assessments created by state and local practitioners can be found in the REMS TA Center Tool Box.

Your education agency can host a regional training event for schools, school districts, or IHEs in your county or region. Regional trainings are valuable activities for bringing together multiple education agencies and their community partners to collaborate and network with each other to ensure consistency with school safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness efforts. Regional trainings also assist in providing an opportunity for practitioners to learn from the REMS TA Center’s subject matter experts, as well as each other, about lessons learned and available resources in the region.

If you are interested in hosting a regional training event with the REMS TA Center, it is an easy and straightforward process. Once you complete your application and submit it to info@remstacenter.org, the REMS TA Center will contact you to learn more about your goals and objectives for your training event. From there, we will submit your application to the U.S. Department of Education for approval. Once approved, we will work with you on the next steps for planning and coordinating your event, including acquiring subject matter experts for your event and marketing and outreach for your event. We look forward to delivering a regional training to your area!

We’re excited to share information about the REMS TA Center Twitter Chat series that has been occurring during August and September. We are hosting Twitter Chats with experts in the field to showcase that everyone within the school can contribute and play a part in school safety. Each chat focuses on a different role, such as school nurse, licensed clinical social worker, security director, among others. The REMS TA Center prompts questions from the expert and audience to share insight and lessons learned. You are invited to join in during the live Twitter Chat or read the archived Tweets from the series. Don’t have a Twitter account? All our Twitter Chats are archived and can be viewed at any time. To learn more, stay tuned for the next #REMSChatWithAnExpert and follow us on Twitter @remstacenter!

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