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.
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Timeless School Safety Strategy Series: Partnering With Your Local First Responder Agencies
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Schools and local first responder agencies can work together to build relationships (or sustain existing ones), garner trust, and inspire confidence in their emergency preparedness levels. This month’s timeless school safety strategy from our newly released fact sheet focuses on local first responders, including law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, emergency management, 911 Center personnel, and possibly other agencies specific to your local jurisdiction. When schools plan collaboratively, train, conduct exercises, and conduct after-action meetings with their local first responders, it can help improve the emergency preparedness capacity of the whole school community.
Local first responders can collaborate with schools and school districts in various ways. For example, schools and first responders may wish to coordinate the use of school buildings on holidays, weekends, or other times when the buildings are not in use for training. This allows first responders to become more familiar with your building, enables them to train in important response procedures, and builds confidence and trust. The REMS TA Center’s Collaboration and Community Partnerships: Strategies for Effective School and Higher Ed Emergency Operations Plan Development fact sheet provides additional information on the partners schools may call on for support.
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Advancing Cyber Safety in February and Beyond
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Protecting students from cyber threats is an ongoing priority for schools, school districts, and institutions of higher education (IHEs) and requires a multifaceted approach. This month, consider bolstering your cyber safety initiatives by participating in Safer Internet Day on February 6. Safer Internet Day is a time when schools and IHEs can update their emergency operations plans (EOPs) to include cyber safety initiatives and raise awareness in their community about cyber threats and digital citizenship.
The REMS TA Center has several resources to assist school and campus communities in taking part in Safer Internet Day:
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This month, consider utilizing these REMS TA Center resources and collaborating with students, faculty, staff, and community partners to improve cyber safety in your school or campus community.
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The REMS TA Center demonstrates our commitment to education agencies by collecting feedback and making improvements to existing services. Through our use of training evaluations, online feedback forms, membership groups, listening sessions, and our subject matter experts (SMEs), we gather firsthand feedback from practitioners, which provides valuable insights into their experiences, expectations, and satisfaction levels, enabling us to address limitations and enhance the overall user experience.
This knowledge is also instrumental in shaping the design and development of future products and services that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of practitioners in the school and higher ed emergency management field. Whether you have participated in one of our programs or used our toolkits or plan to do so, we encourage you to share your feedback! Here are a few ways to do so:
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- Have you visited our website? Navigate to your favorite page on our site and rate it via the "Share Your Feedback" button on the right-hand side of the page.
- Used SITE ASSESS? Please complete this short evaluation form to help us ensure that SITE ASSESS is continually enhanced to meet your needs.
- Is there a training topic you would like us to develop in response to a need or lack of resources in your school community? Email us your thoughts at info@remstacenter.org, and we will respond within 2 business days.
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Partnering With State Emergency Management Agencies
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When planning for a possible emergency event, it is important for schools and IHEs to do so in collaboration with local, state, and federal partners. Ongoing collaboration between state education agencies (SEAs), schools, IHEs, and other state-level partners can help coordinate preparedness activities, like disaster response and recovery planning and training and technical assistance. One key state-level partner is the state emergency management agency.
State emergency management agencies can support schools and IHEs with EOP development in the following ways:
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- Serve as an ad-hoc planning team member.
- Provide additional training opportunities.
- Connect them to assistance programs after an emergency incident.
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Schools and IHEs should also connect with their state emergency management agency to help ensure that their perspectives are represented in state-wide emergency planning efforts. This means that state-level supports are more likely to align with school and campus community needs.
Reach out to your state emergency management agency or contact your SEA or local emergency management agency to help make that initial connection. Your school or IHE may want to designate a point of contact to streamline communication with your state emergency management agency. To find your state emergency management agency and other state-level contacts, click the link below:
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Leveraging Feedback to Expand Training Programs in Nebraska
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Soliciting feedback from participants and SMEs can be an important way to ensure that training is accessible for intended audiences. The Grants to States for School Emergency Management (GSEM) grant program required each SEA applicant to describe how the SEA planned to evaluate the quality of training and technical assistance events offered, as well as incorporate feedback from local education agencies (LEAs) and other stakeholders. During its GSEM program, the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) doubled the number of training types it offered to LEAs in response to participant feedback. School districts requested that more time-intensive training be held during summer months and less time-intensive training be held during school months; to meet this need, NDE developed mini EOP workshops to offer during the school year, which helped reduce the burden on school and district staffs. In total, NDE moved from providing two types of training opportunities to LEAs to offering nine different types of training opportunities, which included the EOP mini workshops, as well as EOP pre-training sessions, 2-day EOP trainings, EOP follow-up training sessions, tabletop exercises, a 5-day School Safety Academy, a family reunification exercise, and conference presentations.
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