Parent School Warning System - Concept Paper

Effective Communication Tool for School Threats

Our world has changed a lot since 9/11.  The ever-growing threat of terrorism exists in every part of America today.  Is their a better way to strike terror in a parents face than to attack a school?  We have to look no further than the September 1, 2004 take over by rebels in the town of Beslan near the Russian republic of Chechnya.  As many as 400 children and teachers were taken hostage in exchange for the release of Chechnen prisoners.  Could something like this happen in the United States?  Possibly.  The United States and its citizens have been targets of terrorists for many years.  Terrorists have attacked our country before.  They will try to again.  We have the National Response Plan in place to help in emergencies.  The one missing piece of this plan has been effective communication.  The Parent School Warning System (PSWS) can bridge that communication between Incident Managers (Incident Commanders and/or school authorities) during an emergency, disaster, or crisis when the Incident Command System (ICS) and/or National Incident Management System (NIMS) activates.  PSWS assists the Incident Commander by providing a tool that provides authoritative, accurate, and vetted information directly to parents at the direction of the Incident Commander. 

The purpose of this paper is to outline how the Educational Service District 101 (ESD 101) Parent School Warning System (PSWS) or “the system” provides a key communications tool to benefit Incident Managers (Incident Commanders and/or school authorities) during an emergency, disaster or crisis when the Incident Command System (ICS) and/or National Incident Management System (NIMS) activates.  PSWS assists the Incident Commander by providing a tool that provides authoritative, accurate, and vetted information directly to parents at the direction of the Incident Commander.   

The PSWS was created from a pilot project at ESD 101 called C.O.L.D. (Closures and Outages for Local Districts).  ESD 101 needed a tool to notify the media when weather related events caused school closures or delays.  Once notified, the area media would pass on the information to the parents and community through TV or radio.  C.O.L.D. is entering it’s third winter season in 2006 and is a subset of PSWS.  This system is being used by over eighty (80) school districts across eastern Washington and northern Idaho as a regional media notification tool for weather related closures and outages. 

C.O.L.D. led ESD 101 to the development of what is known as the “Call Tree Replacement” service.  Call Tree Replacement is used in urgent situations as an organizational tool to notify school staff and/or the media.  With the success of these services, it became clear that the most efficient use of school district dollars was to find a way to standardize a system that can be used on a larger scale through full integration with School Information Systems (SIS) that would allow for direct communication with school communities.  PSWS is designed to be a school communication tool that can be made available for first-responders to communicate efficiently and effectively with parents, guardians, staff, media and other members of the community.  The added benefit of this fully integrated system is that it can be used in cost saving and other useful ways including: to send daily truancy alerts to parents, track children on buses, send alerts for fires, bomb threats, lockdowns, snow closures or delays, early dismissals, activity cancellations, etc. 

PSWS is used during all four phases of The National Response Plan in schools (Prevention, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery):

• First, during Prevention and Preparedness phases, the system is used to "train" or "teach" parents to use the system as instantaneous, factual and reliable communication between the school and parents and school community members.
• Second, during the Response phase when an actual emergency occurs; the system will provide a reliable and accurate source for information when it is needed the most.  It will free up school staff to allow them to spend time taking care of the immediate needs rather than spending valuable time on the phone trying to contact or respond to people.  Many of our schools have very few resources and PSWS will help with that.
• Lastly, during the Recovery phase; consistent follow up notifications can be made directly to those impacted along with specific updates as needed to the media.

Steps to set up PSWS.

1)      Gather student/parent data through SIS integration

2)      Setup groups within each School District (Staff, parents, guardians, media, etc.)

3)      Setup alerts within each School District (Customized alerts can be created at the time of the emergency/incident)

School administrators or other authorities activate PSWS through a Web interface or by phone.  A message is then sent to groups of parents/guardians, media, first responders, administration, and others via, home, cell, and/or office phone, pager, PDA or email device.  Messages are received on the individual’s preferred method of communication within 2 to 5 minutes.  Groups can be preset based on safety plans or ad-hoc at the time the alert is created.

PSWS is designed to allow the school the ability to easily keep contact information up-to-date through integration with existing school Student Information Systems.  Having this integration offers minimal changes to how the school collects, tracks, and updates parental contact data.  The system can also hold critical contact information for notification of local and regional authorities.

Having critical information accurately and rapidly conveyed in a time of a crisis provides clear direction that will allow both school authorities and/or Incident Commanders to use local resources more effectively to prevent personnel from being overwhelmed with phone calls from uninformed parents and persons in the neighborhood and the media.  The PSWS can reduce risk by conveying a definitive course of action without the delay or loss of important details as can happen in the traditional telephone tree. 

When activated, contact groups are notified using standardized methods that contain an authoritative and consistent message.  PSWS has the capacity and speed to incorporate communications changes as events in the field change.  Schools are tasked to develop quality crisis management plans.  PSWS provides the communications tool needed to execute these plans during a crisis.  These safety plans outline what actions will be taken.  

Without PSWS schools do not have an efficient tool to use for communications.  

When placed at the disposal of the Incident Public Information Officer, PSWS provides a standardized method of communicating with groups of parents to provide them with specific instructions as the Incident Command dictates.  The system synchronizes with the schools' existing School Information System database to ensure phone numbers and contact information remains current without the need to maintain separate systems.  Typical parent contact information may include work phone numbers, cellular numbers, text messaging, PDAs, pagers, emergency contacts, etc.  During the registration of the child into the school system, parents provide contact data and are informed that key information they provide is for emergency response purposes.  This encourages parents to provide the most relevant contact data to school administration.

(Scenario) Using PSWS in a Terrorist situation

There are 30 students registered for Mrs. Jones 5th period history class, Mrs. Jones has taken attendance and has reported absences to the front office using the School Information System.  Two heavily armed men enter the classroom and fire shots in the room.  Following the safety plan, school authorities have called emergency responders via the 9-1-1 system and evacuated all rooms in the school except the room where the armed men have taken hostages.  All evacuated students have been taken to another nearby school. 

The Sheriff’s department has responded and ICS has been put into effect.  The fire department and medical teams are on site. The Sheriff has assumed leadership as the Incident Commander.  The Incident Public Information Officer (PIO) has been ordered by the Incident Commander to notify the parents of the children who are being held hostage using the PSWS.  The PIO, working with school administration, develops a message to send to those parents.  A computer with internet access is located and the message is created and sent.  (Note: If a computer is not available authorities may phone the 24/7 Call Center using the 800 number to create and send alerts.)

Next, the Incident Commander tells the PIO to contact all the parents of the children who were evacuated and tell them where they can go to pick up their children at a reunification site. Parents are advised to bring identification and to be prepared to sign out their children.  The PIO goes through the same process with the superintendent to send the message.

Within minutes:

• Parents and guardians of the entire student body have been notified which children are hostages and which are at a safe location.
• The parents of the relocated children have received specific information of how and where they can be reunited with their children
• Parents of the hostage children have been directed to an appropriate location.  Law Enforcement representatives, school authorities and counselors can address concerns and provide:
  • Accurate up-to-the-minute information
  • Emotional Support and Assistance
  • Food and supplies if the situation is for an extended period
  • Possible seclusion from the press during the event

PSWS delivers accurate information to parents, guardians, emergency contacts and the media in time of crisis.  Parents of the hostages were notified with one accurate message so no misinformation or rumors could start.  The parents of the evacuated children received a different message than those of the hostages.  In this case, attendance was already taken so the students that were hostages were easily identifiable. Finally, media could be notified with accurate, but restricted, information; e.g., law enforcement may not want the media to broadcast sensitive information on radio or television until the hostages are rescued.  In addition, law enforcement may not want to give the media access to the parents or guardians of the hostages during their period of anxiety.

We have experienced several similar incidents in our local area during the past few years. At Frontier Junior High in Moses Lake, a teacher and students were taken hostage. The teacher was shot and killed and several students were shot. At Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane students were evacuated and transported to a remote location while the police negotiated with a student who had a gun. Both of these incidents may have benefited from the PSWS communication system by more efficiently notifying parents about where to pick up their children and that all students had been evacuated.

(Scenario #2)  Using PSWS in a Hazmat incident (Hazardous Materials) situation

An ammonia truck crashes into a parked car on a street in front of a school.  The truck turns over and ammonia is spilling onto the ground.  School administrators smell the ammonia and quickly assess the situation and start evacuation procedures.  The school Superintendent calls 9-1-1 and reports the emergency.  At the same time, the school Principal uses the PSWS to call the toll free 800 phone number and create an alert to all the parents telling them they are taking their children across town to the community center for their protection and to stay away from the school because of a hazardous chemical spill.  PSWS can communicate with parents and the community in a time of crisis.  The system can then be used to communicate additional instructions and to update the media.  The traditional “Call Tree” would not have worked because the parents need to know as soon as possible to avoid panic.  Traditionally, a parent would have heard this information on the radio or TV and may have driven to the school to retrieve their child to only put their own life in danger.    

We have also experienced several natural disasters including wild fires, ice storms and a volcano eruption in past years.  The PSWS system would have enabled school officials to maintain contact with parents, guardians, students and the media relating to school schedules, shelter operations and other school community information.

With PSWS, future integration with the National AMBER system, School Mapping projects, weather, or power related warnings could be issued to enhance the reach of existing warning systems to provide greater results.   

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