Risk Management and Protecting School Climate and Safety

I did not expect much from the risk analysis in the beginning because it has never occurred to me that a school must consider so many issues that do not necessarily pertain to academic learning.  From a teacher’s perspective, the academic goals for the year are what we spend the most time on.  While engaging in this project, I thought our fire drill and child bullying prevention methods would be a sufficient focus.  Upon review of our provided resources and the tabletop VC, I understood that much more would need to be analyzed.

I don’t believe I can say my findings are complete, but surely 90% of the outside threats have been considered.  I forgot that we could be prone to earthquakes until I experienced some shaking while in my apartment.  I thought of what would happen if it was a bit stronger and we were at school.  I am confident in our lower probability of experiencing a damaging typhoon and flooding, but I’m not completely sure that our building is earthquake proof to the proper standard.  This is most pressing as it is believed that most buildings, in fact, do not adhere to the current earthquake standards.

I do hope that our management team considers the more internal risks that I have categorized as “staff negligence”.  This is due to the fact that we have had close calls in missing students both on and off campus, and also some allergy scares.  We do not have any policies in regards to the death of a student or staff member be it on or off site.  In fact, our school has not had many discussions in regards to safety that were meaningful and relevant to current events.  There was a terrible tragedy last Halloween, but there was no procedure discussed to help students (and parents) cope with the outcomes.  The president made a special decree to forgo any holiday and other festive events, so we canceled our parties and “Fun Friday” plans for the week.  Many disappointed students and parents demanded we hold a Halloween party regardless after the decree ended.

That experience and some others tell me we have many things to consider as a new school.  Management must be able to think outside the box to come up with as many preventative measures as possible so that all stakeholders can prepare for the worst and, hopefully, come out with the best.

Local Security Issues Near School

We have a fire department and police station a block away from the school.  There are currently no security issues that are obvious and could take more time to really investigate.  The school is surrounded mostly by government buildings and restaurants, so while there is a potential fire threat, there is a low chance of large-scale crime.

We are also located in a very suburban area that is a bit central in rural surroundings.  While there may be natural floods, wildfire, etc., our school is not close enough to cause immediate danger.  City landscaping has been quite deliberate in creating a city that isn’t too densely structured with a better balance of greenery among concrete.

That being said, I still believe and will encourage management to have more emergency preparedness plans and hold on-site training about them with the inclusion of police officers, hospital doctors and/or fire fighters.  We have so many teachers that are new to the profession or that have no real experience with an emergency situation.  I do not hope for any emergency situations to occur, but the reality is that school personnel cannot truly grow to handle emergencies well without either a plan or an experience.  As they say, we don’t know what people are going to do until they actually have to do it.

I believe we need a much clearer understanding of an emergency response team, and the roles that each person is supposed to do while they are on the team.  If we have established specific people to use as a point of reference or contact, then we can better utilize this system of creating incident reports for various instances.  At this time, I am pretty sure that all teachers believe the incident report is only to be used for medical care level harm that a student might endure.  However, I am thinking the incident report should be used for physical fights between students, any arguments that escalate to a certain level between student and teachers, as well as huge emotional changes that students might go through such as tantrums.

So far there have been many tantrums, especially in one class in particular from March to the beginning of May. As a head teacher, I inquired about the issues going on in class and was informed that there was not a good collaboration on how to handle the situation among the two teachers in charge of the class.  One is licensed in early childhood education in South Korea to their standard.  The other teacher is brand new to the industry and has not had any formal training.  Therefore, in spite of the inexperienced teacher receiving feedback from me on how to handle tantrum situations, due to the disagreement of the Korean teacher the feedback was not implemented as given.

Another issue that I have with our current emergency preparedness measures is that not all teachers are familiar with what needs to be done in case of emergency.  At present, the information stays in a guidebook that goes to the parents, however, it is only a baseline answer to a question.  When put into a real situation I have seen teachers go into panic mode, not truly understanding what they needed to do or how they needed to complete procedures.