This article originally appeared in the Fall 2024 edition of the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO)’s official publication, The Journal of School Safety.
Author: Joe Hendry, PSP, CLEE, Senior Director of On-Site Services at Navigate360
This summer at the NASRO Annual Conference, I spoke with numerous officers about planning for and recovering from critical events. It became apparent that schools are facing increasingly complex safety concerns and significantly lacking in emergency preparedness. Inadequate planning can lead to failures in emergency response and negatively impact recovery efforts.
The challenges schools face today cannot be addressed with outdated safety management tools and methods that leave them vulnerable and unprepared to respond to critical incidents. It is crucial to recognize what needs to change in school emergency preparedness and understand why certain practices we have relied on for years are no longer considered standard.
While several critical incidents in the past could serve as examples of why certain former standards were replaced, the examples discussed in this article will be drawn from the Critical Incident Review of the Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School by the U.S. Department of Justice. I will highlight key takeaways from the report, share what we can learn, and explain how we can better prepare schools to respond to and recover from critical incidents.
1. Single-Option Lockdown is Insufficient
The school’s response to an active shooter emergency was based on a traditional single-option lockdown—remaining out of sight in a darkened room and maintaining silence. When the incident began, several classes were not in their classrooms. Due to their lockdown training typically being confined to a classroom, staff and students ran back into the building to lock down rather than evacuating. Tragically, the gunman was already inside at least two classrooms. The report notes: “Lockdown procedures are predicated on a locked door, impenetrable doors and walls, and other physical security measures that do not exist. The school district should reconsider lockdown procedures in a dynamic, evolving situation and that the risk of remaining in place may outweigh the risk of evacuation. Teachers, staff, and students must be provided with options for protecting themselves” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2024). Active threat training should include all areas of the campus and various response options, not just the traditional lockdown.
2. Outdated Lockdown Tactics Can Hinder Response
Police reported that window shades were pulled down, preventing them from seeing into rooms from the perimeter of the building. It was later discovered that this was part of the school’s traditional single-option lockdown protocol. This tactic, derived from Drive-By-Shooting (DBS) drills, slowed response and evacuation. For interior threats, window shades should be up on the perimeter of the building. NFPA 3000, the national standards document for Active Shooter and Hostile Event Response referenced in the Uvalde report, removed the old standard of single-option lockdown in January 2024 and replaced it with multi-option response. Multi-option response covers all three responses to the event: evacuation, enhanced lockdown, and what to do in contact with a threat. This highlights the urgent need for schools to adopt enhanced lockdown procedures to improve response times and increase the chances of survival.
3. Effective Dispatcher Training is Crucial
In this incident, the dispatchers speaking to children in contact with the gunman kept telling them to be quiet. This is eerily like the 1999 Columbine shooting, where a dispatcher kept telling Patti Nielson to keep the kids calm and, on the floor, which led to several deaths while they were trying to lockdown.
In neither incident did the dispatcher ask if evacuation was an option. The evacuation of students from those rooms may have saved lives and forced the police in the hallway to respond, leading to faster treatment of wounded victims. Training for dispatchers should include multi-option responses to prompt victims.
4. Students Need to Be Trained to Evacuate Without Adult Presence
Many students involved in this incident were evacuated without adults. The students, who were elementary-aged, had limited or no instruction on where to go or what to do.
This is a failure to plan accordingly. Many inadequate plans assume that children will always be under the supervision of an adult. Numerous incidents, going back at least as far as Columbine, show that this is not true. Fire training does not make this error, as children are trained to evacuate on their own and go to specific rally points outside of the school. Multi-option response training must provide students with clear evacuation instructions they can follow, whether or not an adult is present.
5. Transition to Notification Centers
The old Reunification Centers have been replaced with Notification Centers under new NFPA 3000 standards. Teams at these sites should be trained to work with victims and coordinate with various stakeholders to provide comprehensive support. While important, reunification is only one function of the Notification Center.
These centers also need to provide areas for mental health resources, police interviews, secondary casualty collection points for triage of victims, notification areas for families of killed, wounded, or missing staff and students, and initial community resources. These sites should be developed during the risk assessment process, established and trained before an incident occurs, and equipped to operate for up to 48 hours.
6. Implement NFPA 3000 Standards, Starting with a Risk Assessment
Emergency preparation should follow NFPA 3000 Standards for preparing, responding, and recovering from critical incidents. This applies to all first responders, facilities, and leadership.
Conducting a full-scale risk assessment is the first step. This comprehensive evaluation identifies gaps in site policies, plans, personnel, training, and infrastructure.
Below are additional gaps in preparation that would likely have been identified through a thorough risk assessment, which could have improved both the response during the incident and the recovery process.
Access and Key Management: School police were not issued keys, and there were no key boxes for law enforcement or fire services. Key boxes should be installed in known locations to allow emergency personnel immediate access without resorting to force. This should be addressed during a risk assessment.
Accurate Building Maps: Inaccurate interior maps hindered law enforcement’s response. Accurate maps and photos are essential for effective orientation, evacuation, and planning. A risk assessment would have highlighted the need for up-to-date and usable building maps.
Incident Command and Rally Points: The Incident Command Post was co-located with a Rally Point, causing confusion and ineffective command and control. NFPA 3000 recommends pre-selecting separate locations for these functions to avoid such issues.
Incident Command System Setup: The delay in setting up an Incident Command Post and its placement within the crime scene led to ineffective response and communication. An incident command post should be established outside the crime scene to avoid disrupting operations and to manage public and media interactions effectively.
Victim Triage Locations: Law enforcement’s decision to move victims to multiple locations without setting up designated triage sites contributed to inefficiencies in emergency medical response. Proper site selection and setup should be determined during a risk assessment to ensure unified command and effective triage.
Joint Information Center (JIC) Coordination: The absence of a coordinated JIC resulted in conflicting information being provided to parents and loved ones. Risk assessments should include planning for a JIC to ensure consistent communication and effective reunification efforts.
These examples represent just a fraction of the insights from the extensive, 600-page Uvalde report. Similar issues have surfaced in other incidents, underscoring the need for ongoing improvement in school emergency planning. By learning from these experiences and updating our standards, we can better mitigate future incidents and enhance recovery efforts.
Ensure Everyone in Your School District is Prepared to Respond
The tragedy at Robb Elementary highlights the critical need for updated and comprehensive emergency response plans. The traditional, siloed approach to school safety is no longer sufficient to address and mitigate critical incidents effectively. By adopting a proactive, holistic, and options-based approach to active threat response training and school safety, school leaders can ensure adherence to NFPA 3000 standards. This will enable schools to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies. It is essential for school districts to reassess their emergency plans and implement these updated strategies and tools to enhance safety and security for all.
Citation
U.S. Department of Justice. (2024). Critical Incident Review of the Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School. Retrieved from https://cops.usdoj.gov/uvalde.
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