Pa. Community College Leads First Ever School-Crisis Management Training.
Written by Hammer
Filed under: Administrators, Building safety, Disasters, High School, News, People Involved, School Grade Level, School Safety Issues, Security, Shootings, Violence
Tom Barnowski, the progressive director of Northampton Community College’s (Bethlehem, Pa.) Corporate and Public Safety Division, designed and conducted what is believed to be the state’s first ever symposium on managing the crucial first ten minutes of a school crisis. Barnowski, who also led the first series of Disruptive Student Management trainings in Pennsylvania (Easton, Pa.), meticulously created a three-part program featuring realistic scenarios requiring teachers and administrative staff at Pen Argyl High School to resolve dynamic simulations (scenarios) in Fire, EMS and/or Hostage-Terrorist situations.
IN Crisis – Living the First Ten Minutes, A Discussion of Immediate Incident Response, Barnowski used three outstanding presenters to take teachers through scenarios requiring teachers to arrive at immediate solutions in real time. Former Allentown Deputy Fire Chief David Swoyer took his groups through a realistic scenario where a disgruntled student had started a fire which engulfed their classroom with smoke and the possibility of fire entrapping them. NCC’s Chris Post took his teachers through a scenario where a student suddenly passed out and was unresponsive, while City of Bethlehem Police SWAT leader Chris Beebe led his classes through an emotional odyssey where an enraged student’s father took a student hostage and threatened to shoot the teacher and/or other innocent students.
The symposium ended with a lively discussion of all the cogent issues elicited by the scenarios. All three program leaders (Swoyer, Post and Beebe) provided a myriad of suggestions to managing crisis.
The seminar was hosted by Pen Argyl Superintendent Dr. William Haberle, who promised more such training sessions for his educational staff.
Hammer
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SCHOOL SAFETY PLANNING WITHOUT ASSESSMENT: GUESSING IS NOT PLANNING
This is how most school district design school safety plans. They use a little bit of internet information, a little bit of other districts information and a lot of guess work. This is not professional or effective planning.
Without a compete assessment an effective plan cannot be designed. Most districts have had safety assessments conducted by local people or companies. The problem is that these assessments are superficial and general ineffective for planning purposes or problems solving.
Most of the security assessments that have been performed in U.S. schools have focused either on security hardware [cameras, locks, etc.] or exterior crime prevention. Since school safety is primarily about the management of a school environment and the people in it, an accurate assessment of safety must include analysis of the management systems in place on a daily basis that affect daily security issues.
http://www.SERAPH.net
Teachers are victims of over 400,000 violent crimes each year in the U.S. OJJDP.
From the Congressional report “The State of School Safety in American Schools” available online at http://www.seraph.net/documents/SchoolSafetyInAmerica.pdf