District planning team: Getting started and steps

The following information follows the guidelines of U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students, Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans, Washington, DC, 2013

add 6th step and refernce and move to planning section

There are five broad steps for completing an emergency response plan.

Step 1: Identify Threats and Hazards
The planning team should discuss, and identify potential threats and hazards faced by the school.  These might include fire, extreme weather, school violence, bomb threats, acts of radicalization, etc.  Some of the threats might be everyday threats, while others might be extreme threats.

To begin the process of identifying them, the planning team members could share their own experiences, data and knowledge of threats and hazards the school and surrounding community have faced in the past or may face in the future. Think about this exercise as a brainstorming effort.

In a parallel process, the planning team should reach out to local, state, and federal agencies for data and information about historical (such as weather) and predicted threats and hazards faced by the surrounding community. Local and county agencies that might be included in this process are emergency management offices, fire and police departments, and local organizations such as National Guard, hospitals, and other community emergency response teams. 

Step 2: Assess the Risk Posed by the Identified Threats and Hazards Once an initial set of threats and hazards has been identified, the district planning team should discuss and evaluate the risk posed by each of the identified threats and hazards. To get started, rank them in order of most likely to occur - greatest to least likely threat.  For each one, project the effects it will likely have.

At the end of this exercise, the planning team will have a document that compares and prioritizes risks.  This will allow the team to decide which threats it will address directly in the Crisis Intervention Plan.

One option for prioritizing and ranking is by using a mathematical approach, which assigns numbers such as a 1-to-5 , or 1 to 10 scale for different categories of information used in the ranking scheme. See example below:

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Step 3: Identifying Threats for Emergency Response Plan

The planning team may decide to only address threats that rank “high” in risk priority, or they may address some of the threats that rank “medium.”  The Federal Department of Education suggests that threats ranked as high and medium are addressed. For each of the identified priorities, the team should develop (at least) three goals and three objectives for each desired outcome for (1) before, (2) during, and (3) after the threat or hazard.

Goals are broad, general statements that indicate the desired outcome in response to the identified threat. They are what personnel and other resources are supposed to achieve. Objectives are specific, measurable actions that are necessary to achieve the goals.  The team may need to identify multiple objectives in support of each of the goals. 

More details on these functions are included in the Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans (ed.gov) Links to an external site.

Step 4: Determining the Course of Action

The following steps can be followed as a guide to determining the course of action:

1. Depict the scenario. Create a potential scenario based on the threats identified and prioritized.

  • What is the action?
  • Who is responsible for the action? 
  • When does the action take place?
  • How long does the action take and how much time is actually available? 
  • What has to happen before? 
  • What happens after?
  • What resources are needed to perform the action?
  • How will this action affect specific populations, such as individuals with disabilities and others with access and functional needs who may require medication, wayfinding, evacuation assistance, or personal assistance services, or who may experience severe anxiety during traumatic events?
  • What are the communication steps during this process?

2. Determine the amount of time available to respond. This will vary based on the type of threat. For example, in the case of a major blizzard, the school might have days to plan and prepare, while the school would only have minutes in the case of an active shooter event. 


3. Identify decision points. Decision points indicate the place in time, as threats unfold, when leaders anticipate making decisions about a course of action. Walking through each scenario in detail will help identify the relevant decision points and point people for each one, such as whether or not to evacuate, shelter in place, or lockdown. 


4. Develop courses of action. Planners develop courses of action to achieve their goals and 
objectives by answering the following questions:

  •  What is the action?
  • Who is responsible for the action? 
  • When does the action take place?
  • How long does the action take and how much time is actually available? 
  • What has to happen before? 
  • What happens after?
  • What resources are needed to perform the action?
  • How will this action affect specific populations, such as individuals with disabilities, access and functional needs who may require medication, wayfinding, evacuation assistance, or personal assistance services, or who may 
    experience severe anxiety during traumatic events?
  • What are the communication steps for during this process?

More details on these functions are included in the Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans (ed.gov) Links to an external site.

Step 5: Reviewing the Plan. The team writes and formats the plan, reviews and seeks feedback from stakeholders and community partners, seeks official approval, and shares the plan with district schools, community partners such as first responders, local emergency management officials, staff, and stakeholders.  A plan is complete if it

• Incorporates all courses of action to be accomplished for all selected threats and identified functions; 
• Integrates the needs of the whole school community; 
• Provides a complete picture of what should happen, when, and at whose direction (Has a clear communications pathway for each step); 

•Estimates time for achieving objectives, with safety remaining as the utmost priority; 
• Identifies success criteria and a desired end state; 

•The plan must comply with applicable state and local requirements because these provide a baseline that facilitates both planning and execution. 

Step 6: Plan Training and Implementation. Everyone involved in the plan needs to know her/his or their roles and responsibilities before, during, and after an emergency. Training and practice are key to the success of the training.

Best Practices:
Schedule regular meetings. Hold a meeting at least once a year to educate all parties on the plan. Go through the plan in detail to familiarize these stakeholders with it.

Visit evacuation sites. Show all relevant stakeholders parties where the evacuation sites are located and where specific areas, such as reunification areas, media areas, and triage areas will be located. 


Give involved stakeholders appropriate and relevant literature on the plan, policies, and procedures.

Post key information throughout the building. It is important that students and staff are familiar with and have easy access to information such as evacuation routes and shelter-in-place procedures and locations. Ensure that information concerning evacuation routes and shelter-in-place procedures and locations is effectively communicated to students, staff, and parents with disabilities as well as others with access and functional needs, such as by distributing the materials by e-mail in an accessible format. 


Familiarize students and staff with the plan and community partners. Bringing community partners (e.g., law enforcement officers, fire officials, and EMS personnel) that have a role into the school to talk about the plan will make students and staff feel more comfortable working with these partners.


Train staff on the skills necessary to fulfill their roles.  Include training for substitute teachers must be trained on the plan and their roles in the plan. 

Exercise the Plan. The more a plan is practiced and people are trained on the plan, the more effectively they will be able to act before, during, and after an emergency. This will lessen the impact on life, mental health and property. Exercises provide opportunities to practice with community partners such as first responders, local emergency management personnel, local law enforcement. Practice exercises also allows the team as to identify gaps and weaknesses in the plan.

The types of exercises listed below require increasing amounts of planning, time, and resources.

Tabletop exercises: Tabletop exercises are small-group discussions that walk people through a scenario and the courses of action a school will need to take before, during, and after an emergency to lessen the impact on the school community. This activity helps assess the plan and resources and facilitates an understanding of emergency management.
Drills: During drills, school personnel and community partners such as local and state law enforcement use the actual school grounds and buildings to practice responding to a scenario.
Functional exercises: Functional exercises are similar to drills but involve multiple partners; some may be conducted district wide. Participants react to realistic simulated events (e.g., a bomb threat, or an intruder with a gun in a classroom), and implement the plan and procedures.
Full-scale exercises: These exercises are the most time-consuming activity in the exercise continuum and are multiagency, multijurisdictional efforts in which all resources are deployed. This type of exercise tests collaboration among the agencies and participants, public information systems, communications systems, and equipment. An 
Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is established by either law enforcement or fire services.

The full details of the above steps can be found in the Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans (ed.gov) Links to an external site.