Emergency preparedness for maintaining student safety while at school remains a priority for educational institutions across the United States. But are the same safety considerations given for after-school events?
A recent history of violence at high school football and basketball games has re-focused attention on the need for athletic directors to proactively facilitate streamlined communication and collaborative planning amongst internal safety stakeholders, local law enforcement, and other emergency first responders.
School Safety Planning and Collaboration
Establishing a collaborative critical incident response team consisting of school personnel and emergency response partners within the community can ensure all stakeholders are prepared to respond effectively to events, either during or after school hours. The responsibilities of a critical incident response team include identifying risks and vulnerabilities and determining the appropriate assessment methodologies and procedures. For an athletic director, being a member of the critical incident response team can ensure sufficient consideration and planning are given for after-school event safety — to protect players and attendees should an active threat occur.
A critical incident response team should consist of:
- School Administrators
- School Resource Officers (SROs)
- Athletic Director/Personnel
- School Counselors
- Fire/EMS
- Law Enforcement
- Local Emergency Management
- Teachers/Staff Members
- Transportation Supervisor
The Role of an Athletic Director in Safety Planning
There is currently an emphasis on the potential adversarial, incidental, and human-caused threats that might occur during a high school sporting event. These types of threats can include:
- Fights
- Gang violence
- Criminal activity
- Active shooter(s)
A well-established role for an athletic director when planning a response to such incidents is determining the ingress and egress of fire/EMS/law enforcement providers in all locations where sporting events are held, as well as assisting with developing protocols for the following:
- Crowd control / clearing the area of players or bystanders
- Creating and sharing pre-scripted messages with event participants
- Assigning personnel to assist fire/EMS responders with navigation to patient(s)
- Ensuring bus drivers are trained on who to contact and what to do
- Establishing thresholds for continuing the after-school athletic event after the incident
Complete Planning: Further Reducing the Chaos of Emergency Response
Beyond the standard action items above, however, athletic directors now have a powerful new tool to solve a missing piece of the safety-planning puzzle – the need for coordination and collaboration between internal and external emergency response stakeholders around a single plan of action.
Very often, during an active threat event, the convergence of multiple responding agencies, news media, and concerned family members presents additional logistical challenges that threaten efficient time management and decision-making.
The StrataSite® Active Threat Plan™ platform minimizes the chaos of an active threat event by giving athletic directors, responding agencies, and emergency stakeholders a tool to collaboratively build, share, and train around a plan that includes command and control information, primary initial response locations, communications worksheet data, and more.
For athletic directors, deployment and adoption of the StrataSite Active Threat Plan typically begins with a platform demonstration, then a conversation with members of local emergency responders and the school’s critical incident response team.
If you’re an athletic director seeking more complete emergency preparedness, request a demo of the StrataSite Active Threat Plan today.
