Reflections of 2024 From the REMS TA Center

Thank you for subscribing to the REMS TA Center mailing list. We view your subscription as a demonstration of your commitment to school and campus safety and emergency preparedness, and we applaud you. The end of another busy year is here, and we are reflecting on all the training, tools, and other resources that we created on high-quality emergency operations plan (EOP) development in 2024. We began the year with goals to engage new audiences, create more role-based resources, enhance our collaboration efforts, and address topics of high need. Thank you for contributing your feedback to us via email, surveys, and web forms so that we can continue to evolve our technical assistance services. Below are lists of NEW resources we released in 2024 that address various goals and priorities for the REMS TA Center.
 

The REMS TA Center hosted a webinar series in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments on preventing and addressing gun violence in schools. Each of the five events were approximately 90 minutes in length and featured speakers from the local, state, and national levels, many of whom had survived incidents of gun violence. Topics covered in each webinar included school violence prevention, how high-quality EOPs build school emergency preparedness capacity, effectively responding to incidents of school violence, navigating the road to recovery from school violence, and youth and young adult experiences as school violence survivors and advocates. Furthermore, the REMS TA Center released a sample template letter on safe firearm storage that is also available in Spanish. It is intended for principals and school districts to customize and disseminate to families, guardians, and caregivers to share essential information about safe firearm storage.
 

We developed resources on addressing the threat of suicide in school communities through their EOP and preparedness work. The REMS TA Center hosted a 60-minute webinar on providing suicide prevention and intervention supports to students experiencing mental health crises. Presenters from Connecticut discussed suicide prevention and intervention initiatives currently being used locally and statewide. In collaboration with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and U.S. Department of Education, we hosted a 90-minute webinar on how K-12 educators and educational partners can use the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to further support their school communities.
 

The REMS TA Center continues to prioritize cybersecurity as a threat to address within EOPs. This year, we released a new fact sheet on Ransomware Attacks and the Importance of Collaboration in District-Level Cybersecurity Risk Management. It guides administrators, educators, support staff, and information technology (IT) staff through the prevention, response, and recovery stages of a ransomware incident at the district level. It also highlights tested strategies and the importance of collaboration with key stakeholders. Furthermore, the REMS on the Air Podcast features three new episodes on cybersecurity topics. This includes the importance of collaboration in cybersecurity and risk management, first steps to improve your school’s cybersecurity posture, and the role of school board members in cybersecurity. These episodes are streaming on Spotify.

While cybersecurity addresses the adversarial and human-caused threats to networks and systems, cyber safety focuses on addressing such threats to people in the school community in an online setting. The REMS TA Center created a new web page on Cyber Safety for K-12 Schools and School Districts that can be found within the “Topics” section of the site navigation. It provides information on identifying online threats to school communities (e.g., cyberbullying, sexting, sextortion), preparing for online threats (before, during, and after), and creating a Cyber Annex in the school EOP. To complement this page, the REMS TA Center also created a web page that houses Digital Health, Safety, and Citizenship resources. This page contains a search engine, may be found within the Topic-Specific Resources section of the site, and was developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Supportive Schools.
 

EOP creation and revision are best accomplished through a collaborative process with a multidisciplinary planning team. The REMS TA Center created a NEW web page to help K-12 schools and school districts understand this important concept, implement it at their education agency, and collect resources on why each role is important. Found within the “Topics” section of the site navigation, the Collaborative Planning Teams at K-12 Schools and School Districts web page outlines potential roles to consider inviting to join a planning team and identifies relevant resources. Roles include school district staff (e.g., teachers, athletic directors, nutrition directors, IT specialists, mental health professionals), school community members (students and families), and community partners (e.g., school resource officers, public health officials, media representatives).

The REMS TA Center continued a role-based webinar series in 2024 that featured two new roles and how they contribute to school safety: principals and superintendents. These webinars included panelists from local education agencies who shared their experiences and perspectives on how principals and superintendents prevent, protect the school community from, mitigate, respond to, and recover from threats and hazards. Both webinars are around 60 minutes in length and are archived on the REMS TA Center site for asynchronous viewing. Send us an email with another role you would like to see featured in 2025!
 

The REMS TA Center created a number of new resources for institutions of higher education (IHEs), particularly for emergency managers, administrators, faculty and staff who have a role or responsibility in safety and emergency management planning. The most notable of these resources is the synchronous training opportunity, Reunification Planning for Institutions of Higher Education: Family and Friends Center and Family Assistance Center Live and Virtual Trainings by Request. IHEs can request the REMS TA Center deliver this training to their site at no cost on how to develop a Family and Friends Center, Reunification Annex in the EOP, and Family Assistance Center. In 2024, the REMS TA Center also developed training materials of the topic of Planning for Reunification for Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), which may be used by teams to deliver a 90-minute training session or for independent study.

In response to an emerging need, the REMS TA Center created a NEW fact sheet, Planning for Demonstrations, Protests, and Civil Unrest on Higher Ed Campuses. This fact sheet provides information on protests and demonstrations at IHEs, the importance of protecting student voices while maintaining safety, considerations for campus safety leaders and partners, and emergency management planning to develop a Protest/Civil Unrest Annex.
 

The REMS TA Center created two new training opportunities on EOP development for rural schools this year. The first was the synchronous Planning Considerations for K-12 Rural Schools Live and Virtual Trainings by Request. This training is delivered to education agencies through REMS TA Center subject matter expert trainers and support staff. The second was a training package of materials about Planning Considerations for Developing Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) for K-12 Rural Schools. This 90-minute training module aims to equip rural-serving school and school district leaders, educators, staff, and community partners with resources and strategies for using the six-step planning process to meet the unique challenges and opportunities in rural school communities. Download the zip file of materials from the Training Packages web page to engage in independent study or deliver the training to your site. These trainings complement an existing fact sheet that provides rural school leaders and core planning teams with additional information on how to engage in emergency management planning in collaboration with community partners.
 

The REMS TA Center offers several resources that are applicable to both K-12 and IHE practitioners. Site visitors may use the new Training Opportunities web page to explore and learn about all of the training modalities offered by the REMS TA Center. Another new web page on Interlocal and Mutual Aid Agreements contains interview responses from a K-12 subject matter expert and a higher ed subject matter expert. The REMS TA Center’s new fact sheet Donations and Volunteers: Managing Resources for Emergencies at Education Agencies provides information on managing donations and volunteers as a part of education agency emergency management. The REMS TA Center also updated the EOP EVALUATE tool to review and refine your existing EOP and the SITE ASSESS tool to conduct a site assessment of your education agency’s buildings and grounds.

More publications for K-12 schools and school districts are available from the REMS TA Center. We addressed threats such as protests and hate speech and bullying in fact sheets, and highlighted how schools can integrate neurodivergent K-12 students and staff into and collaborate with faith-based organizations on EOPs. We also released new sample annexes that provide a fictional example for before, during, and after a school emergency on functions such as accounting for all persons, communications and warning, and continuity of operations. The Emergency Exercises Training Package now contains a new tabletop exercise on human error. We also released more episodes on the REMS on the Air Podcast on topics such as human error, behavioral threat assessment, and emergency preparedness for afterschool programs.