Recently, I have been in a few discussions where people have asked about the difference between a Lockdown and a Shelter-In-Place. In the context of schools, both are options for protecting students, faculty, staff, and visitors during emergencies. A Shelter-In-Place is used to keep our community members safe from danger outside of the school buildings … Continue reading Lockdowns vs Shelter-In-Place in Schools
Tag: Emergency Management
Safety and emergency management are important areas for all schools. There are lots of marketing efforts put into selling hardware and other solutions to education leaders. While door locking mechanisms, bullet-resistant windows, lockdown blinds, and related hard-security items can be helpful the financial, labor, organizational, political, administrative, and community cost needed for this type of … Continue reading School Safety: Culture Over Hardware
In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. The holiday means a lot to people. Today, I find myself thankful for service people: Law Enforcement, Firefighters, Public Works, Emergency Management, Delivery People, my building’s Doormen, and many others. With the California Wildfires, I am especially thankful for those firefighters. Having helped fight much smaller wildfires, I … Continue reading Wildfires: Giving Thanks and Support
What are the things that you worry about when thinking about safety? What about with your family? With my background and interest areas, stuff that comes to mind for me includes fires, violent people, and medical emergencies. The basics of home and family safety include some things like working smoke detectors (one per floor and … Continue reading Family Safety: Codewords
Elevator Entrapment Protocols and Considerations What to do when someone is stuck in an elevator? This question comes up on occasion in campus safety and emergency management conversations. I asked some colleagues in higher education emergency management via the Disaster Resistant University Listserv about this and got a lot of great responses. After reviewing … Continue reading Elevator Entrapment Protocols and Considerations
Never Forget? We always do - Book Review for I Can't Save You But I'll Die Trying: The American Fire Culture by Burton Clark ______________________________________ Firefighters have to die, right? Isn’t it part of the job? Dr. Burton Clark, EdD, EFO has been arguing in his new book (and for decades) that this is not … Continue reading Never Forget? We always do – Book Review for “I Can’t Save You But I’ll Die Trying”: The American Fire Culture by Burton Clark
Special thanks to involvio.com for publishing this on their site as well - http://blog.involvio.com/2018/01/28/untitled/. Since 1990, federal law has required colleges and universities to have a notification system for emergencies such as natural disasters, active shooters, bomb threats and more. K-12 schools are also required to develop emergency alerting protocols. Campuses send out critical information through … Continue reading Emergency Notifications, Texting, and the FCC
While the ubiquity of cell phones has sparked a debate about the necessity of blue light phones, campus officials might consider the benefits of keeping highly visible phones in service for the purpose of marketing safety.
During the past few years while I have been serving as a Dean of Students, and in many of my other positions, I have thought about the impact of international crises on the campus safety of higher educational institutions and boarding schools. Events all over the world always seem to land on campus; There is … Continue reading International Incidents and Campus Safety: Events Around the World Always Land on Campus
I recently (1 day ago!) started working as the Dean of Students for the Academy at Interlochen Center for the Arts. ICA is a small boarding school in Interlochen, Michigan for art students. This is an exciting opportunity that came through an old mentor in my professional network. As we start with meetings and academic … Continue reading The New Dean…
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