MISSOURI SAFE SCHOOLS

MISSOURI SAFE SCHOOLS

Newsletter of the Missouri Center for Safe Schools February 2002

First, I would like to thank those who serve as safety coordinators. For those who are unaware, during the past few weeks the Missouri Center for Safe Schools staff has been presenting Beginning and Advance Safety Coordinator Trainings across the State. I continue to be impressed with the quality of people who serve as safety coordinators and commend them for the time and effort they dedicate to the safety of our children.

Some of the highlights of Safety Coordinator Training cited by the participants have been:

ü Experiencing ways to use emergency scenarios for generating discussion and information as a part of tabletop exercises

ü Learning about: MSIP related requirements, playground safety, air quality, water quality, and homeless issues.

The tabletop exercise can be a very useful tool for school administrators. Generally, a full-scale simulation exercise is often time and labor intensive. A table top exercise brings key school crisis team members and local crisis responders together to talk through various scenarios that test what the district has in writing to ensure the plan actually work during a real crisis. A description of a tabletop exercise in Nevada School District is contained in this newsletter.

For the past two years the Center has been educating safety coordinators on their role. Although this has been a successful project, below are some questions about how to improve the role of the safety coordinator:

Ø What specifically should MCSS be trying to accomplish with safety coordinators?

Ø How does MCSS meet the broad range of safety coordinator needs considering the differences in the size and commitment of districts/community to school safety?

In addition to annual Safety Coordinator Training, MCSS keeps safety coordinators informed with our quarterly newsletter and our web site. One copy of each newsletter is mailed to each district superintendent. We ask that superintendents pass the newsletter along to the district safety coordinator.

We can all agree that, school safety is a daily concern and is an issue that cannot be taken lightly. Keep up the good work!

Recently, the Governor's proposed budget was presented to the Legislature and the Safe Schools grant program remains intact. While, it is early in the legislative session and final figures may very well change, please remember that continuation grant applications are due on April 1 and first-year applications are due June 15. A workshop for grant applicants is scheduled for March 4 at the Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson City at 1:00 p.m. Registration is not necessary.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is working with the Center for Safe Schools to again host a symposium on for alternative school programs that address students who are violent, abusive or chronically disruptive. The tentative date and location are September 26, 2002, at the Lenoir Center in Columbia. Please mark your calendars now and plan to attend this fall. This meeting is one of the best opportunities for you to meet and network with people from all over Missouri who work with alternative school challenges!

On March 14, 2002, a workshop on the GED Options program will be held in Jefferson City. The GED Options program is an "option" for students who, in order to qualify for GED services, formerly had to drop-out of high school. Under the new Options program, students will remain enrolled in school and attend GED classes along with participating in counseling/training sessions to prepare them with life skills. School districts will be eligible to collect state ADA reimbursement for the students. Students will be awarded a diploma upon completion of this program. For additional details on the workshop, please contact your superintendent or call Shawn Brice at 573/522-1775. Registration is necessary.

If I can be of help with Safe School or GED Options questions, please feel free to contact me at 573/7519094 or rrosenko@mail.dese.state.mo.us.

The scenario for our tabletop exercise involved a tornado that damaged Truman Elementary School (grades 3-5), the High School (grades 9-12), the Vocational/Technical School (grades9-12), and immobilized our transportation system by damaging our bus impound lot. The tornado had been sighted south and west of town and we had a 30 minute period between the sighting and when it hit.

Present at the exercise from the school district were: all effected building administrators and their assistants, building custodians and the maintenance dept. head, superintendent and assistant superintendent, building secretaries, school nurses, transportation department head and his assistant. Representing the city, county and emergency service providers were: the local emergency management director, William Gillette (who is also the fire chief), chief of police and assistant chief of police, the Vernon County sheriff, the local hospital, ambulance service, members of the city and county government, the city street department, Missouri Highway Patrol, and the county emergency management director.

The description of the incident and the time line that drove the tabletop exercise were written by Mr. Gillette and myself. All the participants had completed a multi-hazard plan prior to the exercise and had assigned personnel to roles on their crisis response teams. The purpose was to test the plans and show the school administrators exactly how emergency services would be responding.

As with most such operations, communications became the biggest concern as the exercise developed. In this exercise there was a 30 minute delay in response by emergency services due to damages elsewhere. That brought home to school personnel the point that, realistically, each building might need to function on their own for from 30 minutes to 2 or 3 hours.

School administrators learned the importance of manpower delegation and reassignment. They also learned how to set up their own incident command post and incident command system.

Having the city and county services available proved to be beneficial in answering questions about deployment and safety concerns. Due to time constraints, we were unable to continue the exercise through the return to normal operations, but we made it to a point where we had the situation stabilized.

2. Crisis response team assignments written three deep, so in the event individuals are not able to handle their assignment, others are ready to step in.

3. We also drove home the point of moving our transportation around so they are not all centrally located.

5. It was determined that remote re-unification locations , far and away from the school buildings, should be established. This created an opening for cooperative agreements with other non-school entities in order to relocate and use remote sights for re-unification.

6. The schools nursing staff had full triage plans in place for each building, but the exercise showed that the district needs to have more personnel trained in CPR and first aid.

Over all the exercise was a success. Later this spring we hope to have another tabletop exercise to test the changes we have made and then we will start school drills in preparation for a full-scale exercise.

FIRE EXTINGUISHER OPERATIONS

The National Fire Protection Association provides a mental checklist for deciding whether to attempt to use a fire extinguisher. Attempt to use the extinguisher only if all the following apply:

BACKFLOW PROTECTION

Backflow is the undesirable reversal of flow of non-potable water or other substances through a cross-connection and into the piping of a public water system or consumer’s potable water system. There are two types of backflow—back pressure and back siphonage.

A backflow preventer is a mechanism which presents a physical barrier to backflow. One type of backflow preventer is the reduced pressure zone (RPZ) assembly. State law requires that backflow preventers be installed in water lines leading to boilers and school science labs. The law allows for these backflow preventers to be installed where the water enters the building that houses the boiler and/or science lab. Positioning the backflow preventer where the water enters the building protects the public water system from any backflow that poisons the water, but the occupants of the building are not protected. Therefore, the backflow preventer should be positioned where the water feeds into the boiler or the science lab.

Testable types of backflow preventers must be tested by law at least once a year. The tester must be certified by ABPA or ASSE. The water purveyor must keep test records for 5 years. A water purveyor can shut-off a customer’s water if they don’t have proper backflow protection.

This article was contributed to by Richard Evans (Nixa School District), Troy Head (St. Joseph School District), and Pat Houlahan (Francis Howell School District).

Dr. Russ Thompson, Associate Director of the Missouri Center for Safe Schools, is the newsletter editor. If you would like to submit an article for a future Missouri Safe Schools Newsletter, please send him your submission by e-mail to thompsonrs@umkc.edu or mail it to:

Check out the web page for the Missouri Center for Safe Schools at http://www.umkc.edu/safe-school and call us at our offices in the School of Education, University of Missouri-Kansas City, (816) 235-5656.