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 comprehensive school safety topics. All events featured are FREE to participate in and range from virtual to in-person opportunities for engagement and professional development.

The 50th anniversary of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 re-emphasizes the importance of accounting for the needs of all individuals in emergency operations plans (EOPs). Ensuring that your plan considers students, staff, and visitors with disabilities and other access and functional needs before, during, and after an emergency can enhance its overall quality and comprehensiveness. One key way to engage in this work is to invite a special educator or disability specialist to serve on your core planning team. These individuals within your school community can provide guidance on how to meet students’ physical and emotional needs and provide input on annexes within your EOP.

The REMS TA Center offers several resources that can be used within school communities to address this topic. A recently hosted Webinar on The Role of Special Educators in School Safety Efforts showcases how special educators engage in and enhance EOPs. The Integrating K-12 Students With Disabilities Into School Emergency Management Planning fact sheet provides strategies to use when planning for special needs and providing for students with disabilities before, during, and after an emergency. Training materials are available for download on Integrating the Needs of Students and Staff With Disabilities and Other Access and Functional Needs and an archived Webinar Addressing Access and Functional Needs (AFN) in School and Higher Education Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) is available for asynchronous viewing.

Even though National Bullying Awareness and Prevention Month has ended, education agencies can plan to address and prevent bullying throughout the year. Behavioral threat assessment studies have shown that most attackers were victims of bullying, and others, such as bystanders, most often observed acts of bullying. Schools can work with community partners to implement comprehensive programs to promote and encourage safe and supportive school climates. Bullying prevention programs may help foster a healthy environment where students feel empowered to report bullying when they witness it or are victims of it and where school authorities can intervene. Your education agency can take steps to include bullying prevention within your EOP and become an upstander for bullying prevention for your education agency by

• Learning more about bullying and its impacts. Bullying can affect the whole school community. Learning more about how it affects the individual and the school culture and climate is critical. You can learn more about this topic from Stopbullying.gov.
• Developing or updating your Bullying and Cyberbullying Annex by viewing our Webinar on this topic, Using the School Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) Framework to Support Bullying Prevention Efforts. Maintaining your Bullying and Cyberbullying Annex of your school EOP is essential to maintaining a safe school climate.
• Employing bullying prevention programs for your education agency to bolster your Bullying and Cyberbullying Annex. You can start by visiting Stopbullying.gov. This Federal Website contains helpful resources and tools to support schools in preventing, identifying, and addressing bullying.

The REMS TA Center has developed a NEW resilience strategies training for institution of higher education (IHE) administrators, faculty, staff, students, and their community partners. This synchronous training is available through the Live Trainings by Request and Virtual Trainings by Request programs and presents approaches to resilience for college and university personnel who work directly with students, faculty, and staff during times of personal and community crises.

Throughout this in-person and virtual training opportunity, the REMS TA Center’s Subject Matter Expert trainers present information on dimensions of compassion fatigue, including occupational burnout, the unique aspects of IHE campus culture and climate, the relationship between trauma and resilience when crises occur, the development of a self-care plan, and Psychological First Aid. Participants will learn resilience strategies that can be used to increase their ability to work more effectively with their peers, students, faculty, and staff impacted by stress, loss, and trauma brought on by emergency events, including, but not limited to, community or family violence and economic hardship. This training can assist IHEs in their health, social, emotional, and behavioral recovery efforts before, during, or after an emergency event.

To request this training, complete and submit the Training by Request Host Site Application. You will receive an email notification acknowledging receipt of the application within 3 days of applying.

Infectious diseases are constantly emerging and evolving. Community outbreaks of the flu, the common cold, and variants of COVID-19 can occur at any time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) points out that schools are especially vulnerable because caring for children involves close contact between individuals.

The fall and winter months are a great time to focus on preventing and mitigating the spread of infectious disease. Visit the CDC’s Guidance for School Administrators to Help Reduce the Spread of Seasonal Influenza in K-12 Schools and brief your school community on signs and symptoms of infectious diseases, best practices for hand hygiene, and the importance of staying home when sick.

The REMS TA Center offers a variety of resources and trainings to support your infectious disease prevention and recovery efforts. Strengthen your EOP through the online course School EOPs In-Depth: Planning for Infectious Diseases or your training efforts through the Infectious Disease Planning module in the Specialized Training Package. Find additional practices, tips, and strategies in the resources below:

• Infectious Disease Tabletop Exercise
• Pandemic Planning: Developing an Infectious Disease Annex

Be sure to tune in and take action during National Influenza Vaccination Week this December 4-8. Together, we can lessen infectious disease spread in our schools and school districts.

Using funds from the Grants to States for School Emergency Management, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) is developing a hybrid emergency preparedness training opportunity. This training will include online, self-paced learning modules that participants can take to earn credits. MSDE partnered with Maryland Public Television to turn the existing emergency preparedness curriculum into a hybrid option. The curriculum concludes with an optional capstone activity that requires participants to conduct an in-person tabletop exercise with other staff members at their education agency. By completing the full course, including the capstone activity, participants can earn continuing professional development credits through MSDE. This type of professional development training offers participants an opportunity to learn about high-quality EOPs, practice that learning with a collaborative exercise, and earn credit along the way. MSDE will invest in adding additional modules that will include additional comprehensive approaches to school safety. This will include other aspects of safety such as interdisciplinary teaming and cross-system/sector alignments; school climate and culture; safe, inclusive, and supporting learning environments; social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health/well-being; and discipline.