Communication During A Crisis: Best Practices at Westminster Christian Academy

Training on how to respond in a school violence crisis is a necessary but regrettable fact of being an educator. The rise in awareness of violence in our nation's schools has led to the creation of emergency response plans that when enacted, can provide helpful and live-saving advice for faculty. Communication with the community, parents and teachers is a prerequisite for managing a crisis safely, and we're proud to provide this real life example of how an educator responded to an incident at his school.

Todd Fuller is the Director of Finance and Operations for Westminster Christian Academy in St Louis, MO. In September of 2006, his school underwent an incident involving a student who brought a rifle to school. The incident was resolved without the loss of life, but the situation gave Todd personal experience on how Emergency Response Plans work, and fail to work, as planned.

"A teacher came into my office and told me a student was in the parking lot with a rifle and that it appeared that he was going to commit suicide."

Todd has recounted the incident for school officials, but rather than relating the details, he has chosen to discuss what he learned from the incident. The following are his words:

With stories of two separate school shootings in the news this past week, I'm guessing that many of your schools will be giving a little more attention to your emergency procedures in the near future. I thought you might benefit from some information about an incident that occurred at our school about two weeks ago.

At about 3:45 p.m. on Wednesday, September 13, I was in my office working on an email (just a typical day) when I heard a commotion in the business office. A teacher came into my office and told me a student was in the parking lot with a rifle and that it appeared that he was going to commit suicide. I immediately called 911. Across our campus word quickly spread to other administrators and we began to get all students back into the building, including athletic teams on the practice fields. The police arrived and quickly took control of the situation. To make a long story short - when the student motioned the rifle towards one of the officers in a threatening manner, another officer shot the student in the leg and the student was quickly apprehended. Fortunately, the student will recover from his wound and is getting the help he needs.

Rather than give you all of the details of what happened that afternoon, I thought you might benefit from learning about what we did well and what we wish we would have done better.
What we did well:
As a whole, the administrators and faculty acted quickly and appropriately. During a situation you don't have time to pull out your emergency manual and look up the procedures; you just act on instinct. Our staff quickly got all of the kids into the building without creating a sense of panic.
We all knew that our Head is the official spokesperson of the school. All of our staff did a good job of referring all questions from the media to our Head.
While our Head met with the media, the rest of our administrative team met and put together a plan for the next day (e.g., additional counselors, faculty meeting, student assembly). When our Head was able to break away from the press (between newscasts) we were able to quickly bring him up to speed.
About 2 hours after the incident we sent a statement to all of our families via an e-mail blast, a voice broadcast SchoolReach and an announcement on our website. This statement was drafted by our administrative team while our Head met with the media. We received numerous compliments from our families during the next few days for our timely communication.
"Although our communication to families worked well, in hindsight we wish we would have sent an initial voice broadcast right after the situation stabilized."

What we could have done better:
Our internal communication during the incident was poor. In theory, we all carry Nextel radios. Two key administrators were not carrying theirs at the time. Because we don't have a great signal on parts of our campus, those of us with Nextels had trouble communicating. We have an emergency broadcast list programmed into our phones, but none of us know how to use it. This would have helped immensely. At first, many administrators knew the kid was somewhere on our lot, but didn't know where. One administrator actually sent one of the first police cars to the opposite side of our campus. Fortunately I was able to relay exactly where the student was to the 911 operator so the police got to him quickly. Needless to say, a better communication system, with a stronger signal (we're getting a quote for a better signal booster) with better training for our administrators (many who before this incident considered the Nextels a nuisance) would have helped immeasurably.
Although our communication to families worked well, in hindsight we wish we would have sent an initial voice broadcast right after the situation stabilized (something to the effect of "there was an incident at Westminster, it is now over, no one is in danger, more info to follow). News about this spread very quickly and we had parents flying onto our lot trying to get to their kid which added to the commotion.
During the standoff we made an announcement over the intercom asking everyone to stay away from the NE corner of the parking lot due to an emergency situation. Because we didn't give any more details, kids in our library moved to the windows to see what was going on. Although they wouldn't have been in harm's way, witnessing a suicide would have been a very traumatic experience. We should have gone to a full lockdown and moved everyone away from windows and doors. Even at that, our lockdown script is not very detailed and we've never practiced one, so announcing a lockdown would have been confusing to some. During an incident you don't have time to write great announcement scripts. We're in the process of writing some scripts that can be used for various situations.Like most schools, our emergency procedures get a passing glance during faculty orientation and then spend the rest of the year on the shelf.
We needed a good script for our receptionist to use to respond to the many phone calls that came pouring in. Most of our administrative team was initially away from the business office, leaving the receptionist to do her best. At one point, she was worried about saying the wrong thing so she simply put the phones on night mode. We needed a better plan that called for several people to answer these calls with an easy to follow script. Again, this is not something that is easy to draft on the fly.
Like most schools, our emergency procedures get a passing glance during faculty orientation and then spend the rest of the year on the shelf. Fortunately, by instinctive reaction our administrators implemented the majority of our plan during the incident. We now plan to review our procedures on a regular basis at our administrator meetings.
Hopefully you'll be able to learn from our experience should you ever have to deal with an emergency situation.
Todd Fuller
Director of Finance & Operations
Westminster Christian Academy

Preparation and Planning are the key to successful management of any emergency response. Here at SchoolReach, we are committed to providing reliable and effective communication measures to schools for all of their messaging needs.