Education in Emergency: Role of the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Discretionary Grant Program

The presentation will cover several areas dealing with the university’s ability to prepare for an emergency or catastrophic event. The areas covered include:

Ensuring Resilience to Disasters has more tasking’s than another mission and involves many different agencies to accomplish those tasks. The four tasks are to mitigate hazards, enhance preparedness, ensure effective emergency response, and rapidly recover. The main agency that is responsible for these tasking’s is FEMA. FEMA’s mission is to “reduce the loss of life and property and protect communities nationwide from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters” (FEMA, 2017, p.2). FEMA works with federal and State services to assist them in accomplishing their goals. They also assist local services by assisting in setting up emergency management agencies (LEMA) and set guidance for Emergency Operations Planning (EOP). EOP’s are “plans that provide an overview of the jurisdiction’s preparedness and response strategies. It describes expected hazards, outlines agency roles and responsibilities, and explains how the jurisdiction keeps the plan current.” (FEMA, 2010,

In California, there are school programs that will help prepare the children for the disaster. Not just that, the program are placed to help them gain knowledge on the mechanism of natural disaster, to be specific an earthquake disaster. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Service (Cal OES) (2008), developed a program that

Each include page contains example descriptions and columns labeled tasks, persons responsible and specific resources. The “task” sections of the crisis management plan are explicit guides on how to handle specific situations regarding students experiencing a crisis situation. The “persons responsible” column are sections where the school’s administrator must list the crisis management team members responsible for carrying out a specific task. Upon further review of the crisis management plan, the “persons responsible” column are at least 4 – 6 years outdated. Of the three administrators listed, two have not been employees of Gibsland-Coleman for at least 4 or more years. The “specific resources” section is quite frankly the most important part of the crisis management plan as it should list the most up-to-date contact information for all local police department, fire departments, ambulance, hospital and crisis lines. Similar to the persons responsible information where the information was there, but quite outdated, the specific resources information is completely blank. Although the school may have this information readily available in the front office, this information needs to be updated and placed in the crisis management plan for accurate records. As with most emergencies, there may time is of the essence. Having the appropriate contact information placed easily assessable, reduces the amount of time crisis management team members may spend searching for accurate contact

"The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools (OSDFS) sponsors Emergency Management for Schools trainings to provide support to school staff and administrators interested in enhancing their preparedness efforts. Emphasis for the Emergency Management for Schools trainings is placed on emergency management plan development within the framework of the four phases of emergency management: Prevention-Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery" (U.S. Department of Education).

According to Developing Emergency Operations (2016), there are five areas of preparedness that an emergency operations plan should encompass. The first, prevention, is having the capabilities necessary to avoid, deter, or stop a crime from occurring in the school. The second, protection, is having the resources to secure a school from an act of violence. The third, mitigation, is the ability to eliminate or reduce the impact that a crime would have if it occurred. Response is the fourth area, which is the ability to stabilize the situation once an emergency has occurred. Finally, a good plan must consider recovery methods, which means providing resources to those affected by the

Through funding, these agencies are able to provide the proper tools necessary for preparedness, response, and recovery in the event of a disaster or threat. This aid is allocated by the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP) which deals with providing training and planning initiatives for state and local agencies. For the City of Franklin, three grant programs under the Homeland Security Grant Program will be utilized including: State Homeland Security Program, Urban Areas Security Initiative, Metropolitan Medical Response System Program, and the Citizens Corps Program. Each of these grant programs will be utilized if the city cannot accommodate the cost for recovery out of its $44,000,000 budget.

The project aims to educate the Latino community in Worcester, Massachusetts about emergency and disaster preparedness. In determining this project, we consulted Healthy People 2020 topics, and selected from among the new topics the one which most spoke to our experiences. As is supported by the literature, we recognized the recent difficulties over the last ten years in community preparedness for and response to natural disasters and public emergencies (Pokras, Zambrana, Mora, & Aaby, 2007). While communities across the United States have been tested in terms of their resources and organization in responding to emergencies ranging from hurricanes to terrorist attacks and subsequently put in place improved strategies, there are still populations which remain vulnerable (Pokras et al., 2007, Eisenman, Glik, Maranon, Gonzales & Asch, 2009b). Despite the resources which communities have put in place in order to ensure that citizens are prepared for disasters and emergencies, the ability of these resources to reach immigrant populations which may experience barriers due to language, etc. is uncertain (Pokras et al., 2007, Eisenman, et. al., 2009b). One population which has suffered from this uncertainty is the Latino population

Based on the presented information, the following adapted crisis intervention protocols and plan are suggested for Hilo Intermediate School, and could also be implemented in other schools within the district with adaptation as needed for each individual school’s unique needs. Additionally, it should be noted that while these steps are presented in a step format, steps can be skipped or repeated as needed to assist in responding to varying crises, emergencies, and disasters.

Government at all levels plays an important role during disaster management. Actions and roles of each government agencies are spelled out in the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National Response Framework (NRF). But before we go into details on the roles of governments, let me first of all explain what constitute emergency and emergency management, just to give clearer understanding some of these terms. Then I will examine the roles of governments at all level including first responder actions, mutual support, lead and support roles.

The purpose of the Emergency Preparedness Plan is to save lives and prevent injuries in case of emergencies such as nuclear attack, fire, natural disaster, civil disorder or other, and provide the necessary best practices to ensure all possible and relevant forms of communicating with our faculty, staff, students, and parents. Mrs. Patricia Harris of the International Studies Elementary Charter School was interviewed about the International Studies Elementary Charter School’s Emergency Management Plan and the role of the school counselor during emergencies. Surprisingly, the school counselor does not play as important of a role than one would have thought. Although, the counselor does serve as one of the Designated School Emergency Team Members, some the tasks that would seem likely the counselor would perform, are performed by other administrators. Tasks such as talking to parents or being there for the students are performed by the principal while the school counselor is delegated to direct traffic. Based on the Emergency Management Plan, it would seem that the school counselor’s role is still not clearly understood. With all the expertise that counselors can bring to a crisis situation, it’s disappointing that counselors are assigned such a miniscule task as delegating traffic. Counselor Harris did discuss the Dougherty County School System’s Crisis Team. That team is

The burden of emergency management has grown great deal in the last few decades. We have seen an increase in natural disasters, a new threat of terrorism on our front door and an increase in manmade disasters. All of these have tested emergency management in a number of cities and towns across the nation. It is not always disasters that present problems for emergency managers. We have to look beyond our traditional view of emergency management of helping us during times of disasters and view what issues they consider may affect their emergency response. Issues that emergency management see that are moving into the critical area are issues of urbanization and hazard exposure, the rising costs of disaster recovery, and low priority of emergency management.

Protecting the public’s health historically has been a state and local responsibility. However, the growing threat of bioterrorism has highlighted the importance of a strong public health infrastructure to the nation’s homeland security and has focused increased attention on the preparedness of the public health system (Frist, 2011). Since the 2001 anthrax attacks Congress has passed new legislation to increase the strength of the nation’s public health system thus the funding has also rapidly increased to meet the potential demand. There is an ongoing debate however, as to what level of contribution local, state, and federal agency’s feel is an appropriate level of ongoing public health investments.

An effective crisis management response plan outlines specific procedures for administrator, teachers, and students during evacuation emergencies. Administrators work with teachers, students, parents, law enforcement officers, business and community members, to develop an effective emergency and crises plan. The administrator provides leadership in developing and monitoring the school safety plan and also establishes procedures for emergency evacuation and crisis management at different stages of the plan. However, an effective leader develops a comprehensive prevention education plan, and regularly reviews the code of conduct manual for revisions and current laws.

In less than two decades, social media has revolutionized modern communication and information sharing. What began as a simple form of social networking has turned into innumerable platforms for people around the globe to share ideas, create and share businesses, promote brands, read news from various sources, as well as share and find vast amounts of information, among many other uses. Thus, with a few clicks of a button, people are now able to interact with someone on the other side of the world. The capabilities created through social media’s many uses have forever changed global politics, business, and interpersonal communication.