Comprehensive emergency preparedness involves everyone in the whole school community whether they work within school or campus buildings, live within the school community, or trust the school community with the education and safety of their children. However, not everyone knows their role in helping to prepare the community. This year’s National Preparedness Month theme, “A Lasting Legacy,” is the perfect impetus for education agencies to take the lead in promoting a whole school community culture of emergency preparedness. Find recommended activities below that education agencies can engage in during September to promote emergency preparedness to students, faculty and staff, community partners, and caregivers.

• Students: Use the REMS TA Center’s #MyPreparednessPromise graphic to encourage students to share actions they can take throughout the month of September to help cultivate a culture of preparedness. Download the graphic from our Creative Materials page.
• Faculty and Staff: Use the tabletop exercises included within the REMS TA Center’s Emergency Exercises Package as a part of professional development or training sessions hosted with faculty and staff. It’s a great way to encourage continual brainstorming around emergency preparedness.
• Community Partners: Assess the partners that your education agency currently relies on for support in the event of an emergency and determine whether a memorandum of understanding needs to be created or updated. Access the REMS TA Center’s online course for a refresher on this topic.
• Caregivers: Reinforce the role of families and caregivers in enhancing school safety by inviting them to engage in emergency preparedness activities hosted by your school, school district, institution of higher education (IHE), or community partners. Learn more about the role of families and caregivers by listening to our Webinar on this topic.

Are you ready to engage in emergency management planning but unsure where to start? The REMS TA Center offers a suite of EOP Interactive Tools for schools, school districts, and IHEs, including their planning teams and safety leaders, to use for FREE. Included within our suite of tools are two Web applications (apps) that are easily accessed from our Website on a computer and Internet browser:

• EOP ASSESS can help you test and enhance your understanding of elements critical to creating and maintaining a high-quality emergency operations plan (EOP). This tool may be used to ensure that planning team members are using the same terminology.
• EOP EVALUATE can help you compare your plan to Federal recommendations and determine gaps or potential areas of improvement in your EOP. This tool may be used to enhance plan sections using the information and resources in the custom output report.

The REMS TA Center recently updated two FREE downloadable tools that can help you in important EOP development activities and complement the two Web apps. EOP ASSIST boasts a refreshed interface and user experience, reformatted plan document, and revitalized resource toolkit. SITE ASSESS collects feedback from users via a NEW questionnaire, allows users to create and easily distinguish templates from assessment files, provides for the ability to select customized answers when questions are uploaded into the app, and contains an improved education facilities section and refined resources.

• EOP ASSIST prompts planning team members through the federally recommended process and generates a customized and downloadable EOP. Users must register to download this software app from the REMS TA Center Website and install it on a server. Information technology personnel with an intermediate level of expertise in networking, server configuration, and database configuration is required.
• SITE ASSESS helps site assessment teams examine the safety, security, accessibility, and emergency preparedness of buildings and grounds. This mobile app is downloadable from the Google Play and Apple App stores onto your mobile device with an Android or iOS operating system.

Read more about the EOP Interactive Tools via our flyer.

The role of educators extends beyond academic achievement; educators play a critical role in the social, psychological, and physical well-being of students. In this caring and supportive role, they are often the first to hear about and respond to students experiencing trauma or recovering from an emergency. These situations can compound over time, resulting in vicarious (secondary) trauma and other mental health issues. However, educators can prevent vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout by enhancing their resilience and developing a self-care plan.

The start of the school year is an ideal time for educators to be intentional about developing a self-care plan and committing to utilizing resilience strategies on a regular basis. The REMS TA Center provides educators with resources and training opportunities to help them better understand resilience strategies and compassion fatigue, and to consider the impact of these things on self-care and the learning environment. Below is a list of Webinars and a self-paced training with an action plan that can be used by educators to help them identify and practice resilience strategies to prepare for the challenges they may face in the new school year.

• Understanding Educator Resilience & Developing a Self-Care Plan Specialized Training Package
• Understanding Educator Resilience & Developing a Self-Care Plan Webinar
• Trauma-Informed Care for Schools Before, During, and After Possible Emergency Events Webinar

Did you know that the REMS TA Center produces fact sheets related to EOPs on a variety of topics? Fact sheets are one of many types of resources that are accessible via the Publications & Guidance Documents page of the REMS TA Center Website. You can find them easily using the Search filter and selecting Type > Fact Sheet. There, you will find several recently released fact sheets that discuss strategies for engaging in emergency management planning, developing annexes, and ensuring EOPs are comprehensive and customized to the building. Below is a list of the latest fact sheets released by the REMS TA Center for K-12 schools and IHEs:

• Emergency Operations Plan Maintenance: Reviewing, Updating, and Strengthening Plans
• Whole Community Planning: Incorporating Community Events Into Emergency Operations Plans and Coordinating With Partners
• Developing a Bomb Threat Annex: Enhancing the Higher ed Emergency Operations Plan
• Collaborating With K-12 Administrators: Engaging Leadership in School Emergency Operations Plans, developed in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals
• Integrating K-12 Students With Disabilities Into School Emergency Management Planning
• Rural Schools: Emergency Management Planning for All Settings
• Pandemic Planning: Developing an Infectious Disease Annex

State education agencies often partner with other state-level offices and entities to help support schools and school districts with their safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness programs. These partnerships vary in their structure, goals, and activities to support each state’s unique needs. In the first series of our #REMSontheAir podcast, we take a closer look at state school safety partnership models across the country and explore the value of state-level collaborations for supporting school safety and emergency preparedness at the state and local levels. Listen to Part 1 in the series to hear from special guests from the New York State Education Department about the creation of the New York State Center for School Safety and its mission to provide technical assistance and training to schools and school districts throughout the state. Listen to Part 2 of this series, where you’ll hear about how a partnership between the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the Oklahoma City Office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation has strengthened behavioral threat assessment processes across their state.

You can stream #REMSontheAir directly through the REMS TA Center Website. We encourage you to tune in, share episodes with your community, and keep an eye out for new content coming soon!