Crisis Management: Preventing Gun Violence

Our deepest condolences go out to the families, parents, students and educators affected by the senseless, tragic school shooting in Chardon, Ohio, in February. The community continues to be in our thoughts.

While this situation is devastating, the Chardon community and individual educators are being praised for preventing an even greater tragedy from occurring through their quick response and heroic actions. Incidents like this remind us just how important it is to have plans in place for schools to deal with crises. Learning First Alliance (LFA, a partnership of 16 education associations with more than 10 million members dedicated to improving student learning in America's public schools) offers a number of resources to help schools develop such plans, as well as resources to help them react during and after a crisis. View these resources at http://www.learningfirst.org/issues/safeschools.

While schools often plan for a number of disasters, they rarely have a plan in place to respond to gun violence. It is vital that administrators are prepared to respond to a student with a weapon by developing a planned response to disarm the student without incident. One resource outlining how they can do so comes from the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP, an LFA member).

NASSP stresses that whenever an armed student is believed to be on campus, administrators should: gather information; evaluate resources and liabilities; call for help; bring together appropriate school staff to debrief and delegate responsibilities; and continue to monitor the student until help arrives.

In the event of an incident, school personnel must decide whether to act on his or her own or wait for help from law enforcement. If an administrator decides to act, the plan must include surveillance, interception and isolation of the student. Alternatively, if an administrator decides to wait for police, he or she must maintain constant surveillance of the student until police arrive and then be prepared to assist in removal of the armed student and getting other students to safety.

Effective planning can help administrators act quickly in the event of a gun crisis and save lives. For more information about how public school administrators can prepare to respond to gun violence, please visit www.nassp.org/content.aspx?topic=55496.

Has your school experienced a similar situation? What was the outcome? Share your comments with us on Twitter @PSWORKS.