| School safety has become a focus of research in recent years as a result of school shootings, prompting researchers to consider how prepared schools are to handle a crisis. The current study is an exploratory effort to describe the state of emergency response plans across the nation. A survey was sent to a national sample of school psychologists concerning school emergency plans and practices. Results from 86 respondents indicated that 87% of schools have an emergency response plan. Respondents were concerned about the same safety issues across the country. The respondents were most concerned with emergencies involving violence, natural disasters, accidents, terrorism, and intruders. No difference was found between mandated and non-mandated plans in the number of incidents contained in the plan. However, there were significant differences among rural, urban, and suburban settings in the degree to which they plan for utility failure, hazardous material accidents, suicide/mental health incidents and fire emergencies. Schools that used a community-based model in the development of plans were found to have more comprehensive plans than schools that used school-based models. These results advocate the use of community-based plans; however, only 47% of schools used such models. Results also indicated that providing even a one time training about the use of the emergency response plan significantly increased school psychologists' confidence in handling a crisis situation. The implications of these results suggest that proper training is crucial to crisis preparedness. Overall, the results of this study suggest that most schools are preparing for crisis events and just under half use community collaboration, both of which have been identified as "best practices" in crisis preparedness. |
