Visit the REMS TA Center Calendar to find trainings, Web chats, conferences, and other stakeholder activities and events for K-12 and higher ed practitioners on safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness topics. All events featured are FREE to participate in and range from virtual to in-person opportunities for engagement and professional development.

Preventing overdose and substance misuse at schools and campuses can be a community-wide effort. The REMS TA Center invites K-12 and higher ed communities to participate in Overdose Awareness Week from August 28 to September 3. School and campus community members can discover ways to support overdose and substance use prevention; learn more about responding to the threat of overdose through interventions like naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication; and raise awareness about the threat of overdose to school safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness.

During Overdose Awareness Week, explore some of the resources below from the REMS TA Center and its Federal partners on the topics of overdose and substance misuse prevention.

• Opioids, Drug-Related Emergencies, and Substance Abuse Prevention Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic, Podcast
• Opioids, Drug-Related Emergencies, and Substance Abuse Prevention Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic, Webinar
• Opioid Overdoses and Drug-Related Emergencies, Web page
• Lessons From the Field Webinar - Part 1: Knowing the Facts About Fentanyl and Part 2: Preventing and Addressing Fentanyl Use, Webinars (U.S. Department of Education [ED] and National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments)
• Preventing and Reducing Youth and Young Adult Substance Misuse: Schools, Students, Families, Website (ED)

Students play an integral role in school and campus safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness. When planning for the upcoming academic year, core planning teams may consider ways to engage students in efforts to build emergency preparedness capacity during back-to-school season and throughout the year. Consider the following tips for engaging students in emergency preparedness

• Promote opportunities for students to participate. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program can increase preparedness capacity while empowering students. Schools and school districts can share information on joining or starting a Teen CERT or participating on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Youth Preparedness Council. Likewise, institutions of higher education (IHE) can offer information to students about their Campus CERT and promote opportunities to contribute. Your education agency can also engage in stakeholder activities, such as those featured on FEMA's Ready Kids Website.
• Engage students in conversation. Students possess valuable insight, which can enhance emergency management planning and preparedness. As students return to school or campus, consider providing forums for them to share their concerns, goals, and expectations for safety and encourage student organizations to engage their members in preparedness activities. Additionally, planning teams can utilize the Children and Youth Preparedness Social Media Toolkit to continue the conversation on social media.
• Partner with youth-serving organizations. Together, education agencies and youth-serving organizations can provide coordinated activities to enhance student engagement in emergency preparedness and empower students. Partners can integrate preparedness activities into field experiences, expeditions, apprenticeships, and internships, while education agencies can share information on these opportunities with students and families.

Developing collaborative partnerships is an important component of comprehensive school emergency management planning, and youth-serving organizations are vital contributors. Youth-serving organizations, such as local and national associations, skill-building and social clubs, and extracurricular and afterschool programs are ideal partners for enhancing school emergency operations plans (EOPs) because they have a demonstrated commitment to helping students develop trusted relationships with adults and members of their community. They also possess unique and nuanced perspectives on the threats or hazards that pose a risk to the school community and have insight on student, family, and caregiver perceptions of the school or district’s safety posture. Further, as trusted members of the school community, youth-serving organizations can join and serve on the core planning team and provide insight on the landscape of potential threats and hazards facing the school community. Thus, whether assisting in each stage of the six-step planning process, mobilizing to support response during an emergency incident, or serving as partners in recovery, youth-serving organizations are critical community-based partners who can enhance the capacity of schools and school districts to manage every phase of an emergency.

Are you interested in more information on the advantages of working with youth-serving organizations or seeking strategies for collaborating with youth-serving organizations in your community? The REMS TA Center fact sheet, Collaborating With Youth-Serving Organizations to Enhance School Emergency Operations Plans, can support you in creating strong partnerships, expanding networks of collaboration, and enhancing EOP development through collaboration with youth-serving organizations.

Annexes are a critical component of any comprehensive, high-quality EOP. They add valuable information to the plan as they outline goals, objectives, and courses of action to be carried out before, during, and after a specific emergency. Threat- and hazard-specific annexes are developed based on a prioritized list of threats and hazards that may impact a school or school district. Each school EOP may contain different threat- and hazard-specific annexes based on their unique characteristics and needs; some schools or IHEs may prioritize developing an Earthquake Annex, while others may prioritize creating a Bomb Threat Annex. Alternatively, functional annexes contain information about the activation of emergency management functions (cross-cutting activities that can be carried out in response to multiple different types of threats and hazards that impact a school). The Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans recommends schools include in their EOP, at a minimum, annexes for each of the 10 most common emergency management functions: accounting for all persons; alerts, communications, and warnings; continuity of operations; evacuation; family reunification; lockdown; public health, medical, and mental health; rapid assessment; recovery; security; and shelter-in-place.

To support core planning teams in creating high-quality annexes, the REMS TA Center offers an Earthquake Sample Annex, an Evacuation Sample Annex, a Lockdown Sample Annex, and a Shelter-in-Place Sample Annex from which to source ideas and inspiration. While these sample annexes represent fictional schools and scenarios and should not be used as a template, they were created with input from expert practitioners in the field and share examples of what an annex may look like and how it can be assembled. Access the REMS TA Center’s Publications & Guidance Documents Web page to find these sample annexes and be on the lookout for MORE sample annexes from the REMS TA Center in the future.

As a two-time recipient of the Grants to States for School Emergency Management grant program, the Tennessee Department of Education’s (TDE) approach to technical assistance (TA) is multi-layered. The Tennessee School Safety Center launched the School Safety Mentor Program in 2015, which is composed of approximately 10 subject matter experts regionally spread out across the state. The School Safety Mentors are master trainers who deliver training and provide direct TA to local education agencies (LEAs) on a range of safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness topics. This includes EOP development, family reunification, psychological and emotional recovery, behavioral threat assessment, memorandum of understanding, access and functional needs, the National Incident Management System, emergency management planning for bus hazards, cybersecurity, youth mental health first aid, school climate and safety, restorative practices, and more. Through this School Safety Mentor Program, TDE has been able to provide TA and training to LEAs across the state and recovery support after emergency incidents.