Crisis Management
Since principals are charged with the responsibility for the safety of students and staff members, they have the especially difficult challenge of planning a coordinated response to school crises. Creating a crisis management plan can seem overwhelming because of the complexity of issues and problems that it entails. First of all, there are a variety of potential emergencies, with each one requiring the establishment of somewhat different procedures. Secondly, principals must work cooperatively with local police, fire departments, and other security agencies to coordinate the amount and extent of external intervention during an emergency or crisis. And thirdly, a comprehensive system of communication among all parties must be established. This can be daunting since this not only includes communicating with the various member of the school population but also communicating with the community as a whole. In every emergency situation, effective preparedness is the consequence of a collaborative relationship with the law enforcement agency that has jurisdictional responsibility for the first response to a call for help. While school crisis management plans are usually well coordinated internally, the authors believe that many are shortsighted in their failure to recognize that a school’s crisis may quickly require the services of one or more of the community’s emergency agencies. In such a crisis, all parties must respond in an expeditious and coordinated manner. If an effective crisis management plan has been established and communicated to all potentially involved parties, the school’s first call for help should result in an organized, collaborative response. One of the primary focuses of any crisis management plan should involve the delineation of responsibilities in order to minimize the chaotic aftermath of a sudden disastrous event.
Schools are particularly vulnerable to the mismanagement of crises for several reasons. First, few school administrators have the security training necessary to implement an effective plan. Second, they have relatively little experience in this area, especially when compared to the incidents that are contingent to most police agencies. Third, the political implications of crisis planning may lead to an inference that the school system is already in turmoil. The development of a crisis plan can be viewed as a signal of problems on the horizon. Finally, the dread of anticipating such an event makes it psychologically easy to avoid.These concerns notwithstanding, administrators have a serious obligation to develop a clear plan of crisis management, perhaps more so than other public agencies because of their responsibilities to children. In addition, the authors believe that crisis planning is a natural opportunity for law enforcement personnel to be of invaluable assistance to schools.
