When Disaster Relocates Your Campus

Repeat after us: “Operating with an outdated emergency plan is a dangerous risk.” Now, repeat this mantra: “I promise my students, faculty, staff, and self that I will update and test our school’s emergency procedure plan by -/-/2011.”

You don’t have to look too hard for evidence supporting your objective to update your school’s materials. Recently, a five-alarm fire swept through a Philadelphia charter school, destroying everything including books, pencils, and teacher lesson plans. As school officials search for a new home for their facility, students and parents are left wondering where they should go—and how will they get there. This story is not unusual. Schools, public and private alike, make news headlines frequently reporting natural disasters such as fires, floods, and tornados—even schools that were thought to be geographically blessed face natural disasters.

Now that you’re equipped with a mantra and supporting evidence, you’ll need an action plan. Here are a few tips to get you started on your school’s emergency crisis plan updates.

• First, practice your drills before you worry about re-opening—this can and will save lives. At a minimum, have and practice evacuation, reverse evacuation, shelter-in-place, and lockdown drills a few times throughout the school year.
• Establish a crisis team. Select administrative personnel to be part of this team who are involved with your school in multiple ways such as IT and development.
• When is the last time your administration, staff, and students practiced what to do in the event of an emergency? Make sure your school’s evacuation plans are up to date and that everyone knows what to do and where to report to in the event of an emergency.
• When is the last time your school’s backup files were tested for an emergency? Could everyone get to the information critical for him/her to continue his/her jobs? How seamless was the recovery process? Have your IT department practice emergency procedures regularly and enforce policy that your administrators test accessing files remotely to ensure that your school’s daily functions could survive an emergency situation.
• Ask yourself where your school can resume classes if your facility is compromised. Then answer it. Research alternative locations and have them confirmed. Set an alarm on your calendar that reminds you to confirm this location yearly.
• Set a reasonable deadline for yourself and team of administrators to have a finalized emergency plan that covers all the bases.
• Consider this sample time-line as things to consider, goals, and sequence of events:
  —24 to 48 hours following an event:
  
  Initiate safety/loss-reduction protocols
  Communicate with parents, vendors, media, insurance representatives, and faculty and staff members
  Contact pre-determined alternative site for classroom availability
  —Days 2 to 30 following an event:
  
  Begin migrating to alternate classroom space
  Create off-site redundancies and any necessary work-arounds (transportation, staffing, IT, and other equipment)
  Address safe haven issues (if needed)
  Start classes
  Continue clearly communicating with parents, vendors, media, insurance representatives, and faculty and staff members
  —Days 31 to 90 following an event:
  
  Begin rebuilding (if needed)
  Complete recovery process
  Celebrate (if appropriate)
  Conduct “what did we learn from this” conversations with faculty and staff members, parents, and all others deemed appropriate