When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast of the United States in September, dozens of schools were destroyed or so badly damaged that local school children could not safely attend classes in them—if any students remained behind after mandatory evacuations and unlivable conditions rendered many communities virtual ghost towns.
More than 200,000 Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi children were displaced by the hurricane and resulting flooding. School districts throughout the United States responded generously, finding room to set up classrooms for hundreds of new students from the affected areas and doing their best to help kids continue their education. The city of Houston, Tex., welcomed more than 1,000 evacuee students, absorbing them at least temporarily into an already large urban school district.
"I was in Houston about a week after the hurricane," says Gregory A. Thomas, director of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness Program for School Preparedness and Planning. "Houston did well. They didn't expect so many students, but they did well."
But Thomas worries that relying on the kindness of other school systems may not be enough the next time a natural disaster or emergency threatens widespread school closures. That's why he is a strong advocate for having schools and districts actively plan for such crises.
September, Four Years Later
Others in the emergency preparedness field agree. "No one knows when a disaster will strike," says Dominick Nigro, former director of the New York City Public Schools Office of Student Services in Staten Island. "Disasters, by nature, require an immediate response in order to save lives. The last thing one wants is to be looking around trying to decide what to do. A plan provides the framework for a quick response."
"A sound emergency response plan, coupled with an informed and trained staff, is an essential foundation in time of crisis," says Vincent Giordano, now with the New York Academy of Medicine's Office of School Health Programs, but formerly executive director of the New York City Department of Education's Division of Student Support Services.
Thomas, Nigro, and Giordano say the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina took them back four years. All three played important roles in helping New York City schools keep functioning in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. Nine thousand students and staff were starting their fourth morning of the school year that day at eight schools within four blocks of the Twin Towers. None were killed or directly injured by the attacks, and the learning continued in New York City schools even as damaged facilities were repaired and renovated. The lessons learned that fall in Lower Manhattan can inform school officials whose awareness of emergency preparedness has been heightened by this year's Gulf Coast devastation.
Building a Preparedness Team
The first priority in a crisis, experts maintain, is bringing together everyone who might play a role in preserving the safety and health of the school community. That includes people within the education system and those in charge of general public safety. "Don't wait to build relationships—you can't be in a disaster and then try to get on the same page as your colleagues in the police or fire department," says Thomas, who in 2001 was executive director of the New York Department of Education's Office of School Safety. "Even before 9/11, I pushed myself into relationships that helped schools remain at the forefront of [general] disaster preparedness, so I could advocate for their needs."
Within schools and school systems, a team approach works best. No one person can handle all the details that cascade from a disaster.
"The work that happens up front by the crisis team is what makes a crisis plan work," says David Schonfeld, a nationally known expert on school crisis preparation and coauthor of How to Prepare for and Respond to a Crisis, published by ASCD.
He says seven crucial roles need to be filled on a crisis team, whether it is addressing preparedness at the district level or for just one school building:
- Crisis team chair—Oversees the broad and specific functioning of the team and its members, directs planning and emergency team meetings, and serves as the point person for communicating with emergency response players (e.g., public safety officials and local and state leaders) outside the immediate school environment.
- Crisis team assistant chair—Assists the chair and serves as backup if the chair is unavailable during an emergency.
- Coordinator of counseling services—Establishes liaisons with agencies and helping organizations and assembles services needed to provide support to students. This is a critical role, because an emergency (whether a natural disaster, a crime on campus, or even the death of a member of the school community) is stressful at the least and often traumatic.
- Media coordinator—Handles all contact with print and electronic media to ensure that the community has an appropriate amount of information about the crisis and how the school is responding. Hurricane Katrina drove home the importance of this function on a broad scale, when access to reliable information was almost as scarce as access to food, clean water, and shelter.
- Staff notification coordinator—Establishes, coordinates, and initiates a telephone tree to keep team members and school staff informed of developments if a crisis occurs after school hours.
- Communications coordinator—Conducts all in-house communication, handles incoming calls related to a crisis, maintains accurate and up-to-date contact information for outside parties the team might need to deal with, and serves as backup to the staff notification coordinator.
- Crowd management coordinator—Plans for crowd management if students and staff need to evacuate the school, or if news of a crisis (e.g., the Columbine school shootings) brings throngs of parents to the school while the crisis is unfolding.
Beware relying too much on individual staff people; if they leave, plenty of expertise can leave with them. "It's important to assign these positions to functions, not the particular people who do those functions," Schonfeld says. "When institutional memory goes away, the ability to respond is diminished." He recommends regularly convening the crisis team to keep everyone up to speed, particularly if turnover has changed the players.
Maintaining the Flexibility to React
The same general structure can work for teams functioning at the school or district level, Schonfeld says. But it's important to keep the team structure flexible, too, to enable it to react to diverse situations.
"Shifting from a highly routinized schedule into an emergency response mode is not an easy transition to make, especially when there are hundreds, if not thousands, of young lives to consider," says Marleen Wong, director of crisis counseling and intervention services with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
She advocates adding several more people to the crisis team when appropriate, including the school nurse and school safety officer if a school has such staff. Don't forget the custodian—he or she may be the only person on site with keys to all areas of the school. At the district level, crisis teams might include the administrator in charge of health and human services, someone from the facilities department, a representative of the transportation department, and even a school food-services staff person (see "After the Headlines Fade").
"There is no one-size-fits-all solution," says Sara Strizzi, program analyst for the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. "Emergency plans need to reflect a school or a school district's particular vulnerabilities. A school district in California has very different needs than a district in Minnesota."
Don't Go It Alone
Experts nationwide emphasize the importance of coordinating planning with local emergency preparedness officials. "A primary role falls to local law enforcement," says Thomas. "Emergency services officials come to the process with existing protocols—how they handle particular kinds of emergencies. It's critical that schools not try to do this on their own. Educators can't be experts on the emergency front.
"For example, law enforcement officers can help schools put systems in place that work with existing systems outside the school environment," he continues. "They can help schools develop and run drills and training exercises" that will sharpen response when a real crisis occurs.
"Only through careful and thoughtful planning are relationships forged with local emergency response personnel," says Wong, noting that police, fire, and emergency medical personnel have the best training and expertise "to respond to incidents that place students and teachers in immediate danger."
Getting Back to Normal
Although protecting members of the school community from imminent harm is the first goal of an emergency preparedness plan, getting kids back into classrooms ready to continue learning is the long-term goal. Those with experience handling natural disasters, school violence, and other school emergencies urge educators to give great weight to the emotional and mental health issues that follow a crisis.
"The events of September 11 took a heavy psychological toll on students, including many who were not directly affected," says Nigro. "Crisis intervention and mental health services constituted an important and successful part of our response to the tragedy."
Don't forget teachers either. "When you're dealing with a crisis in schools, you're not just dealing with student needs," Schonfeld notes. "You're dealing with staff issues as well. In New York after 9/11, many teachers were going home to their own crises—helping a neighbor cope, helping with rescue and recovery at the World Trade Center site." Providing needed mental health and counseling services for faculty and staff ensured that the New York City schools could return as quickly as possible to the work of educating young people.
Schonfeld predicts that schools in the Gulf Coast area will benefit from a similar approach. "Schools impacted by the hurricane are going to go through the same thing," he says. "It was hard work being a teacher when it was dry. After the flood it won't get any easier for some time."
