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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SITE ASSESS Milestone: 10,000 Downloads
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The REMS TA Center is proud to announce that the
SITE ASSESS mobile application
(app) has been downloaded more than 10,000 times. This tool was created in 2017 as the first-ever FREE mobile app for education agencies to use to conduct site assessments. Since then, we have updated it on an annual basis to meet the needs of K-12 schools, school districts, institutions of higher education (IHEs), and state education agencies across the country.
Share your feedback with us online to inform future enhancements.
SITE ASSESS helps site assessment teams examine the safety, security, accessibility, and preparedness of buildings and grounds at education facilities. The assessment is customizable and may be exported into Word documents and Excel spreadsheets for recordkeeping and analysis. Furthermore, team members are now able to merge their data into a single assessment. The app is available for mobile devices with iOS and Android operating systems. The REMS TA Center also offers training opportunities on using the tool, such as
training materials, a synchronous training, and an archived
webinar.
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REMS on the Road: School and Campus Visits Throughout the School Year
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The REMS TA Center is grateful to have had the opportunity to visit many cities and towns across the country this school year. We discussed critical topics such as developing an emergency operations plan (EOP), conducting assessments, building resilience, preventing adult sexual misconduct in the school setting, bolstering cybersecurity posture, and more. Below are locations the REMS TA Center visited in the 2023-24 school year:
- Arizona (Flagstaff and Phoenix)
- Arkansas (Little Rock)
- California (Lakeside, Oakland, and Sacramento)
- Connecticut (Hartford)
- Georgia (Forsyth)
- Michigan (Holland and Lansing)
- New York (Albany)
- Oklahoma (Jenks)
- Pennsylvania (Morton and Williamsport)
- Washington (Tacoma)
As many schools end their busy school year and enter their summer break, the REMS TA Center continues to travel to schools, school districts, and IHEs to provide professional development. Education agencies may contact the Help Desk via email at info@remstacenter.org to invite the REMS TA Center to a conference or workshop session or a videoconference event for colleagues. Complete and submit an online application if you are interested in hosting a
virtual or live Training by Request. We look forward to continuing to work with practitioners throughout each school year to support the prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery from emergencies.
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Timeless School Safety Strategies: Improve How You Conduct Exercises
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The summer months are a great time for staff to rejuvenate and practice self-care. They are also a time when staff turnover, retirement decisions, and new hires occur. It is never too early to plan how and when you will conduct emergency exercises to fill learning gaps for new staff.
Schools often have flexibility in how they implement exercises. Changing the time of day, access to leadership, and availability of stairwells and exits can increase staff ownership of EOPs. Ideally, schools will choose exercises that support their geographic and demographic needs. Be sure that you conduct all types of drills that are appropriate for the threats and hazards in your area.
To support your efforts, the REMS TA Center has added a fifth scenario to its comprehensive Emergency Exercises Training Package: a winter precipitation incident that considers human error in school emergency response. Use this and the other scenarios in the package to conduct tabletop exercises; develop after-action reports; and build your preparedness for infectious disease, power outage, flood, winter precipitation, and cybersecurity incidents.
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Strengthening Community Partnerships During the Summertime
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Summer is here, and there’s no better time than now to reach out to community partners and collaborate around school safety. Comprehensive emergency management planning takes a whole community approach, and schools, school districts, and IHEs should seek to collaborate with a diverse group of community partners to create the most robust safety plans and procedures. The summer months represent an opportunity to conduct outreach, host planning meetings, and collaborate to create and practice high-quality EOPs. This month, explore these REMS TA Center fact sheets to learn best practices for collaborating with community partners to strengthen safety, security, emergency management, and preparedness efforts:
To dive deeper, explore these fact sheets designed to support collaboration with specific organizations:
The REMS TA Center also offers a web page outlining the value of collaborative planning teams at K-12 schools and school districts, with examples of key community partners who can serve as members on core planning teams; assist before, during, and after an emergency; support emergency exercises; conduct site assessments; and more.
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Statewide System of Support in Pennsylvania
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As a Grants to States for School Emergency Management grantee, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) works collaboratively with various state-level agencies through the Statewide System of Support, such as the state departments of health and homeland security, the state police, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), and the Center for Safe Schools. In collaboration with PEMA, PDE developed a professional development platform to host emergency management trainings offered to local education agencies on multi hazard planning for schools, public information officer awareness, the Incident Command System, planning for the needs of children during natural disasters, and other key school safety topics. PDE, supported by PEMA, hosted regional technical assistance meetings with schools that were designed to support school core planning teams with developing and updating EOPs. PDE also worked with the Center for Safe Schools to host its annual Safe Schools Conference, which included participation from school administrators, student support personnel, teachers, school nurses, Student Assistance Program Professionals team members, mental health professionals, school resource officers, local law enforcement, and other community partners.
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