Q&A: Crisis Communications

Kenneth Trump, president of Cleveland-based consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services, has 25 years of experience at public and private schools in urban, suburban and rural settings. He has worked with jurisdictions in all 50 states and has authored several books and articles on school safety. He discussed the topic with School Construction News during a phone interview.

Q: What are your thoughts on swine flu in regards to safety and security at school facilities?

A: I am not a health expert, but I do know that schools have been encouraged for several years to have pandemic emergency plans in place for pandemic flu situations. It’s something that schools should have had on their radar for several years, and it is part of the requirements and recommendations for federal school emergency planning grants.

When the recent swine flu incident hit, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Schools should have had some guidelines at least to help them get started to approach the situation in a cognitive, rational manner, rather than an emotional, knee-jerk manner.

Unfortunately, we saw too many schools that panicked and made knee-jerk reactions. It appeared they did not have plans in place and were flying by the seat of their pants.

Fortunately, things seemed to level off a bit once schools connected with their local public health officials and started making joint, rational, sound decisions based on the expertise of the public health community.

Those partnerships need to be established ahead of time. You can’t write a crisis plan or a pandemic plan while the crisis is happening. Largely, we saw that schools were not specifically responding to the threat, but in a knee-jerk manner to parental fear, anxiety and hype.

Q: Do you think most schools have pandemic and crisis-communications plans?

A: I don’t think they do. Most schools have some type of crisis plan, but they don’t have a crisis-communication plan. Also, crisis plans often sit on a shelf collecting dust instead of being tested, updated and exercised with staff training.

Q: What are the key components for a crisis-communications plan?

A: Schools need to identify their key constituents internally and externally. Schools also need to have multiple mechanisms in place for communicating. They need mass parent-notification systems, but they should also update a Web site and PA announcements. Some schools are also looking at social networking.

The key is to have multiple mechanisms for communicating during a crisis because people get information from different sources. Schools also need to have consistency with messages across different platforms, and there should be someone responsible for writing and approving messages.

Q: The 10-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting was this year. Has security improved since that tragedy?

A: Schools have a more heightened sense of awareness since the pre-Columbine era.

The progress momentum during the first couple of years after Columbine was pretty strong.

However, that momentum has stalled and is moving backward for several reasons.

School safety officials are struggling against a shortage of time and money, and in many cases, they are losing on both counts.

There is de-creased federal and state grants and funding for school safety. Reduced school budgets and funding for academics compete with school safety funding, and there is also a competition for time.

There is so much pressure on school administrators to improve test scores that there is a continuously decreasing amount of time for the delivery of prevention programs for students, counseling, mental health support, professional training for staff and other safety strategies.

There is also less time for school crisis teams to do the nuts-and-bolts legwork and train for their crisis plans.

Schools are certainly safer and doing more than the pre-Columbine era, but there are some very serious challenges, obstacles and impediments that are prohibiting schools from being as far advanced as they should be.

Q: Can schools make security improvements without a big financial and time investment?

A: A lot of the things that need to be done require more time than they do money. School safety has to be a leadership issue and a priority for the superintendent down to the building principal in order for it to filter down to teachers, support staff and the school community.

There has to be determination by leaders and a philosophy that it is not an issue of school safety versus academics. School security and academics need to go hand in hand.

School boards and school administrators have to stop looking at school security as a grant-funded luxury. Schools need to include at least some reasonable security expenses into their operating budget, depending on the school district and school within that district.

It’s amazing how often school districts have no line items or any funding for school security or professional training. That’s not going to be acceptable in the eyes of parents, the media and potentially a judge or a jury when schools get sued for negligence after an incident.

Q: What do you see for the future of school security?

A: Unfortunately, at least in the short term, there are not a lot of indicators of significant change in terms or reducing the trends of budget and time shortages. In fact, in his 2010 budget, the president has called for a net reduction of $184 million in school safety funding.

As we sit 10 years after Columbine, it’s amazing that the president and Congress are not reversing the trend of the last 10 years that continually cut school safety funding.

Until we see school safety back on the agenda in rhetoric and funding, we are not going to see those trends reversed. There is a gross lack of leadership at the state and federal levels.

The bright spots are going to have to occur at the local level. It’s up to local school boards, superintendents, building principals and others at the front line to exercise leadership and take a proactive approach.

National School Safety and Security Services