ANGELA BROWN: Good afternoon everyone. It is 1 o'clock, we are going to wait two more minutes and then we will get started with today's presentation. Good afternoon, I am Angela Brown, health communication specialist at CDC's center for preparedness response division of emergency operations. Thank you for joining us for today's EPIC webinar entitled fundamentals for emergency planning for schools and emergency center. Today we will hear from Bronwyn Roberts and Janelle Hughes from readiness and emergency management for schools technical assistance Center, also known as REMS TA, and Madeline Sullivan with United States Department of Education's office of safe and supportive schools. If you do not wish for your participation to be recorded, please exit at this time. You can earn continuing education by completing this webinar. Instructions on how to earn continuing education can be found on our website emergency dot CDC dot gov forward EPIC. The course code is epic 0219 with all letters capitalized. I repeat, the course access code to receive continuing education credit in all caps, EPIC 0219. Today's webinar is interactive. To ask a question please use the Q&A button. The Q&A session will begin after our presenter has finished. Closed captions are available for this webinar. We are fortunate to have Bronwyn Roberts to share her experience in managing large and technical assistance projects and conducting quantitative and qualitative evaluations. She has played a key role in the office of safe and supportive schools, REMS TA center for 12 of the 15 years the center has been in existence serving as project director for 10 of those years. We also have Janelle Hughes with us to share her experience representing the United States Department of Education and REMS TA center at both virtual and live public facing events focusing on a variety of topics. Finally our last presenter, Madeline Sullivan, bullshitter explains working on federal, state, and local school safety, security, emerge main management and preparedness since the Department of education initiated is program including starting the REMS TA center. Madeline, please begin. MADELINE SULLIVAN:. ANGELA BROWN: She is talking, but nothing is happening. MADELINE SULLIVAN: Hi there, can you hear me now? I wanted to say a big thank you to team EPIC, we love collaborating with you, and thank you for inviting us today. Before we begin we also wanted to remind everyone today that our webinar today is a general overview of the planning process and our related resources. We are not going to be addressing any particular hazard or threat. Instead the principles we are going to discuss today applied to many types of public health events including infectious disease outbreaks, and this is of concern to all schools. The Department of Education will collaborate with its federal partners such as EPIC and other offices at CDC, and then with our readiness and emergency managers for schools technical assistance Center or REMS to help disseminate any appropriate and relevant information and resources, including any guidance from the CDC. So we encourage you to follow us on Twitter and sign up for our listserv and you will be able to stay current with that and any services that we develop. Here at Ed's office of safe and supportive schools we administer and collaborate with the REMS TA center. REMS is designed to serve two critical functions, both of which are aimed at helping education agencies continually enhance their school safety programs along that continuum of school safety, so think school safety, security, emergency management, and ideally preparedness. It is important to note too that when we talk about school preparedness we are also referring to all of the actions that schools and their partners take everyday to keep schools safe before, during, and after possible emergencies. That includes prevention, mitigation, protection, response and recovery. This first function we serve is to build the capacity of schools, school districts, institutions of higher education, as well as all of their community partners with shared school safety responsibilities at the local, state, and federal level. We do this in collaboration with our partners and we respond to the needs of the practitioners that we support. The second is that we also serve as the school safety Center for the nation, meaning we provide services to all aspects of school safety and preparedness including planning, to help educational entities and their partners create safe schools. Although we provide a wide array of services and resources, our more popular services include developing and disseminating school centered material and resources as well as developing customizable interactive tools such as software and mobile apps, as well as providing training and technical assistance before, during, and after possible emergencies. You can access the majority of our services and resources on our website, REMS dot EDU dot gov. One thing that is very important to us via our website, one of the options we provide is we promote collaboration and communication which is why we collaborate on most everything we do. We make similar opportunities for you in your engagement activities, as well as our information sharing tools. Two of them you can find on our website. One is the communities of practice, and the other is our toolbox, and you will hear lots more about both of them soon. The next slide please. Great. A key to school safety planning is using a wide lens, or we call that using the all hazards approach. While many of the same partners will be at the table, this approach is going to help ensure a comprehensive plan is developed, and working together on a broad topic you will be identifying multiple common functions that can be addressed to support a wide variety of hazards and threats. For example, communication or reunification and even continuity. We develop resources and tools and training to meet the diverse needs of schools and school systems around the nation. And then we provide that necessary information common to all, as well as those key considerations that are necessary for customization. Then another thing is there is going to be times where you need to be working -- it is just as important that you were working with your partners at the state and local level. We have multiple activities that facilitate that, and we always welcome you to reach out so we can facilitate it as well and then provide direct technical assistance along the way as you were working with them. If something terrible were to happen, please know we are here. Please reach out. We are here to provide you with direct support in the aftermath of an emergency as well. One of the things that we do that is most valuable, I believe, is that we share strategies for protecting the whole school community before, during, and after. So even consideration of a public health emergency, we are going to be sharing strategies on a variety of topics such as social distancing, communication, and continuity. One of the most powerful strategies is to remember that the most effective school safety builds upon a school's everyday people, practices, and programs. So using social distancing as an example, when you have this plan, a framework in place in advance that really promotes those everyday good health hygiene practices and is ready to implement the social distancing strategies, you will be more ready in the event that you need them. And we encourage you to think about frameworks that already exist. So when you are at recess it is not uncommon that schools will have to require indoor resource and students stay in their classrooms. In the event of poor weather or something happening in a cafeteria. So this and whatever policies and steps you take to bring this to light, you will mimic these and then further customize them if you are going to be using them as a social mitigation strategy in the event of an outbreak. Similarly it is not uncommon that school systems will have a half day to accommodate teacher and parent conferences and this might be 1/2 day as well. So if a school has half-day session in the morning and a second in the afternoon. So we encourage you to always remember to start with what you already do and do well every day and think about how you can enhance that to further protect your school and be ready in the event if something were to happen. So thank you. Next slide please. Like I was saying earlier,, we offer a variety of opportunities and manners to engage with us and to engage with your colleagues in the field. So were you aware of us, the REMS TA center, before this webinar? And IFYES, how did you learn of us? Was it through just searching on the web, did you receive one of our quarterly newsletters or maybe happened upon one of our tweets, or maybe we were recommended to you by one of your colleagues or leadership. I am seeing we have some folks -- Stephen says he learned of it through newsletter, Tony said he found us through Google search. That's wonderful. I'm hoping that following this webinar -- someone says they have attended several of our trainings, that's wonderful. I am hoping that following this webinar that you will share some of our materials and begin by following us on Twitter and sending us an email at info at REMS TA center dot org and we will put you on our mailing list. So thank you. Bronwyn? BRONWYN ROBERTS: Thanks, Madeline. Next slide please. Wonderful, fix everybody for having us today, thank you to our partners at CDC. We are so excited to be able to share information on the REMS TA center. Has Madeline mentioned our website is the best place to start to access all of our resources. We call that our one-stop shop for school emergency planning practitioners. You will be able to find everything we discussed today on a website. We do update the contact regularly so we urge you to check back at least monthly to see what is new. You can see if you go that that we have the sliding carousel on the homepage and there we promote recently released resources, national campaigns, and that really timely information. Underneath the carousel you can find upcoming events that you can participate in. We saw that some of you have attended some of those in the past, that's fantastic, you can look there to see what is coming up in the future to see if we will be in your area. We also have information on webinars, web talks coming up and important awareness days. We also offer quick links to some of our most popular pages on the website, so if you are not sure where to start it is a great place to go. We also make a note to provide access on our homepage report guidance documents on school safety topics, and in the next few slides I will talk about what they are and why they are important. Next slide please. In 2013, the youth Department of education used with the US Department of Homeland Security, justice, Health and Human Services as well as the emergency management agency the federal Bureau of investigation, a total of six federal agencies offer the guide for developing highest-quality school emergency operations plans. The school guide was based on years of emergency planning work by the federal government. Then in 2019 to further support the EOP developing process for schools and districts, the office of supportive schools with representatives from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and justice then created the role of districts and supporting schools in the development of high-quality emergency operations plans known as the district guide. This district guide serves as a complement to the school guide and provides information that can help school districts with both individual and shared emergency planning responsibilities and all hazards for the EOP development. Planning teams within districts can use the guide to develop policies and procedures related to school EOP development. Next likely. [can't understand] emergency capacity in these five missionaries. You can see on your screen, we have them listed, prevention, mitigation. Although these generally aligned with the three timeframes associate with the incident, before, during, and after, they are generally interconnected. The majority of prevention and mitigation activities generally occurs before an incident although these three mission areas have ongoing activities that can occur throughout an incident too. And response activities occur during an incident in recovery activities can begin during an incident and occur after an incident. Schools can take steps to build capacity for response and recovery before an incident occurs as well as some of the most critical mitigation work is actually done during and after the incidents. This is the six steps in planning process for developing the comprehensive all hazard school emerges comprehensive plans or EOP. Those of you that are familiar with the committee pititis guide or see PGY1 And it has been modified to meet the needs of school district with our committee partners. These steps are sequenced to support a collaborative process. Which invites multiple perspectives for information gathering, prioritizing, goalsetting execution of specific activities and evaluation. This process is intended to be cyclical and ongoing. The steps are supportive also by supplying school specific planning principle like ensuring that plants provide for the whole school community at all times and in all settings. For example this can mean that they will address the in-person and virtual teaching and learning settings and classroom settings and off-site settings for field trips or athletic events. At each step Plenish should also consider the axis of school, staff, visitors and family. Next live. While the guides don't prescribe an overall school EOP format, instead they present one possible format for consideration and that is what you see on your screen. Is called a traditional format and it includes a basic plan section, functional annex section, and a threat and hazard specific annexes section. District schools and partners are encouraged to choose the format that is most user-friendly and it's their needs. But the guides talk about this just as an example of the potential format, so this basic plan section, that is where you have an overview of the school's approach to emergency operations, the functional annexes section uses the before during and after approach we have been talking about, and details goals objectives and courses of action of common functions that apply across multiple threats or hazards such as evacuation communication sent reunification. Some Aleve threats and hazard specific anat2 section specifies the goals objectives and courses of action for school can follow to address a particular threat of hazard such as a hurricane or an active shooter situation. Next slide please. Our website has these guides and a couple of different formats. We do have an HTML version of the school guide that you could find useful to explore each step in the planning process or if you want to go to specific steps as you are progressing through planning with your team you can easily go back in for the navigate the got in that manner. All you have to do is go to guidance on our website and then the K-12 emergency management planning section to access what we call the school guide at a glance section. We don't have a version of at a glance for the district guide yet but that is coming this year. And then of course we have both PDF version of both guides in their entirety on the website. Next slide. This is now our second poll question, we are hoping to get some information from you. I just talked about a couple of different of the federally aligned tools to help with EOP planning efforts and we were just wondering are there any state local or federal tools that you currently used to support overall emergency preparedness and safety efforts. If you can complete your poll as well as type in what you currently use that would be great to hear. I see the use of [can't understand] for exercises, absolutely, that's a great idea and we definitely recommend the use of that. CDC material for pandemic planning, absolutely, you know where to go. FEMA of course. That's where we are really excited about these guidance documents, they bring together the contributions of six federal agencies. New York State police, fantastic, yes, we have done some great work with New York. Also Massachusetts, fantastic. This is great to see. We really aim to ensure that our resources are available and that you can easily combine and meld what you are planning to do with the local level as well, that is our goal. Fantastic. Okay, thanks everybody, and with that I will send it over to Janelle to talk a little bit more about some more resources. JANELLE WILLIAMS HUGHES: Thank you so much, Bronwyn. One thing emphasized throughout the guide and illustrated by your participation in this webinar is the importance of collaboration with partners outside of the school building. Relationship building is one of the most important elements of a well-managed response, and those relationships should be cultivated before an emergency happens. When key stakeholders who play an integral role during response and recovery already in advance and are aware of and trained on the responsibilities, it can reduce anxiety and stress, ensure all emergency functions that may require activation are considered, and also quicken the pace with which schools can resume operations and continue teaching and learning. In addition, when schools remain inconsistent contact with key stakeholders who support response and recovery, it can help inform updates to EOPs after events take place. As it is always said by experienced practitioners, you never want to be making introductions with critical response partners while an emergency is taking place. The guides recommend that education agencies and their planning partners develop goals and objectives during step three of the planning process. On the screen you will see a sample scenario that is the threat of a fire hazard or emergency. Let's take a moment to explore how partners might explore schools during the four for goals and objectives as outlined here. Before a fire schools will need to work to prevent the fire from occurring, and this might require fire prevention training from the local fire department, access to fireproof containers, or funds to purchase them from state or district partners, as well as the need for support from facilities management experts and state partners to ensure that buildings are compliant with OSHA and other state and local laws. Next slide. Our mission is always to be ready to support education agencies and their community partners from the various threats and hazards they may face. Therefore, a significant part of planning for us involves remaining informed on current research, trends, and legislation, as well as continually producing resources, publications, and tools that can support schools and institutions of higher education in the event an emergency occurs for which we can provide support. So the main reason we remain focused on that all hazards and all threats approach is because the universe of potential emergencies at education agencies may face is so vast. Yet it is also unique for every locality. And since we support communities across the nation, our repository of information and resources must meet that extent and the diversity of needs. If you look on the screen we ensure that the planning process when working with partners takes into account that wide range of potential threats and hazards that may impact the school community. That includes adversarial and human caused threats, biological hazards, natural hazards, as well as technological hazards. Next slide. Our topic specific resources hub which lives on our website contains resources from not only the REMS TA center and the US Department of Education, but also federal agency partners on more than 20 topics that are aligned with the federal guides we have been discussing today. These resources have all been vetted by REMS TA center and Department of Education staff, and there were hundreds of resources available and they are sorted into relevant categories. We have a section specifically related to, again those threats and hazards that we just discussed, as well as emergency management function. Those might include a variety of functions that you think about that will need to be activated in the event of an emergency. These are accounting for all persons, communications, warning, lockdown in the context of the work that CDC does, public health and medical health, and also behavioral health. We also have resources that highlight those planning basics and principles that are so critical. And we really encourage you to explore these pages and share what you find with your colleagues as well. Next slide. We have also created several additional resources to support school emergency resources planning, and one of the resources we are excited to share is the stat map of emergency management resources. It is a section of our resources that contains state specific information and mandates related to school safety. We also have a toolbox of practitioner created tools and documents from the field, and it currently houses more than 300 resources. And to make it easier for you to find what you need, we recently upgraded our toolbox last year to contain a more filterable search engine and this allows you to search by keyword, audience, language, because we also have resources in a variety, and if you would like to share some of the resources that you just mentioned that you use in a previous pole we would love to take a look at those and see how they can be of support to additional practitioners in the field. Next slide. We also right in collaboration with our partners a variety of publications that can be read online or downloaded and printed for sharing. For example fact sheets that explore key topics in school and higher red preparedness as well as safety security and emergency management, and they are all again based on research that we have conducted. Each topic you see on the screen is featured in a separate fact sheet, and just to name a few that includes fact sheets on flooding, wildfires, preparing for opioid -related emergencies, school culture and climate, cybersecurity, all of the missionary is that we talked about. Sextortion and human trafficking, developing human continuity plans and so much more. So please take a moment and feel free to go to our publications page and download those resources for viewing and sharing. Next slide. The federal guidance recommends that high-quality emergency operations plans include threat and hazard specific as well as functional annexing. These are sections of the plan that specify those policies and procedures as well as responsibilities and actions that need to take place before, during, and after many emergency event. While it's important that planning teams develop their own EOPs as they work through this process with the committee partners and ultimately decide how their annexes are structured based on the work together, the REMS TA center has created sample annexes that may be useful in helping to unders and it reflects a very different fictional school. Sample annexes that we have already created are displayed on the screen and include shelter in place, lockdown, family reunification, and earthquake. Coming soon we have an annex that is focusing on hazardous materials as well as power outages. Next live. Now that we've shared a little bit more, let's take a moment for another pole. We would like to get a sense of whether our virtual participants are currently supporting education agencies with EOP development and planning and how. So if you don't mind sharing whether you are currently supporting education agencies with EOP development and planning, and then if you can just add in the chat whether or not that is for the K-12 or higher education, and then provide a bit more detail on how your supporting them as well. Okay, I see higher education, I see law enforcement on a school safety team, K-12 support in Maryland, that is my home state and I'm happy to see you here. Head start and early head start childcare programs, awesome. SAMHSA grant for school mental health. I see that your K-12 is using the REMS format for EOP, awesome. Still investigating what we have in place and what we may need, you are in the best place for that friend. Awesome, you sit on the safety board, that is great news. Head nurse. It's great to see so many different groups represented, I have seen early childhood, K-12 as well as higher education, I also see representative from the local office of emergency management, it's great. They are one of our key partners, great to see you guys here. Thank you so much everyone for participating. It's great to see that most of the participants on today's webinar are supporting education agencies with EEO be developed and planning, and we want to thank you so much for all the work you do to support in the field, and remember that we are here to help you as you help those LEA and SCA. Thank you so much and I will turn things back to Bronwyn. BRONWYN ROBERTS: Thanks, Janelle. Next slide please. Thanks. We do that assist practitioners in writing plants, evaluating plants, and conducting site assessments. All of our tools are intended to teach important federal guidance content as well as to produce useful outcomes such as a site assessment report but we are hoping that you learn while you use them as well as get helpful output. Our tool called the OPSS for example, it's a great tool to use during step one of the six step planning process when you're forming a collaborative planning team. All of your planning team members can go through the online assessment to help create a common understanding and to make sure they are all using the same terminology. EOP assist is our plan generating software application that walks you through the six step planning process to create a downlo emergency operations plan that also aligns with federal recommendations. We also have EOP evaluate which can be used to evaluate an existing plan and help identify areas of improvement, and then site assess is a mobile app that we developed that you can use to document conditions at your site before a disaster occurs. We have the ability in this mobile app to capture photos which is particularly useful and can help to give proof if you need to file insurance claims or request disaster recovery funding. Any of these tools can also help in that regard and help to provide evidence to whether it's your insurance agency, school leadership, school board, to show that you are really trying to actively address and improve your school at the safety. Over time it can actually help to document improvement as well. For example, site assess has an Excel worksheet output and that can be. Training on emergency response procedures is an important component in the six step planning process and an effective emergency planning program as well. Training builds capacity and uses knowledge, promotes buy-in and enhances your comprehensive approach before during and after an incident. Your planning team should consider some of these populations and what they might be needing to train on. Students for example may need to be trained on how to respond to specific emergencies and how to report a concern about another student. Your educators and staff will need to know their role within the incident command system, for example. You might want to train parents and caregivers on how to prepare their own household for emergencies. First responders obviously need to know the layout of building, entry points, and where hazardous materials are stored. And other partners such as community organizations for example might need to know how to report a student concern. It's also important to remember to provide training for those who have disabilities or access functional needs including those whose primary language is not English. Next slide please. Now we wanted to ask you how would you describe your role in supporting the whole school community or individual school safety. We talk a lot about the resources that we have and how they are constructed to help with different populations and in different roles. So we are curious to know what is your role in this. And if you don't work for a school system or a student a family member or partner with a shared set of response abilities, we would love to hear more about it by tapping into the chat as well which some of you are already doing, thank you. It looks like we have a safety director for K-12 district. Folks from Montana, we've had a great time working with Montana over the years, they are one of our great teams. School resource officers, school nurse, fantastic. Health depart emergency management, wonderful, we love seeing all of our community partners present. It's wonderful. [can't understand] we are familiar with this, it has a safety component as well, that's fantastic. Firefighter, paramedic, nutritionist. This is wonderful, really excited to see such a diverse group year. Thanks everybody. We will go to the next slide and we will continue to share those roles, it's wonderful to See, thank you. We also have a variety of training topics and modalities that can help you to supplement the training needs of your programs. Going to talk about a little bit in more detail on these and how you can access them. Next slide please. We have an in person training program known as trainings by request, and this is where we deliver a training on-site to an educational entity. We bring subject matter expert trainees and relevant staff persons to the site to deliver the content. What you can see on the screen is our current portfolio of training topics. We do offer trainings in both train the educator and also train the trainer format in some of them. We have a developing emergency operations K-12 101 training. This is a four hour overview of the six step planning process that we have mentioned multiple times a day, as well as key considerations for creating, enhancing, or advising school EOPs, this is where we offer it in both the train the trainer and train the educator format. We also have one addressing and preventing adult sexual misconduct. This is our newest training and it's a daylong opportunity to learn about and think about creating comments of policies and procedures for preventing and addressing adult sexual misconduct in schools which is a prevalent topic of concern today. We also have behavioral threat assessment training. This is actually our most in demand training and th preventing and addressing behavioral threat assessment, this is something that we have a lot of interest in obviously, and so we have this training to support that as well as a lot of supplementary resources on a website. We also have training on resilience strategies for educators. This is a daylong training focusing on caregivers in schools and school districts and thinking about compassion fatigue and being able to help those who are caring for others, recognize their own need for self-care. Whether you will -- whether an emergency has occurred or not. And we do have that one in both train the trainer and train the educator format as well. We also offer earthquake preparedness for schools training on how school districts and schools can better prepare for an earthquake. Next slide please. In addition to our in person trainings we offer online opportunities to expand your knowledge of school emergency management topics. For example we regularly host webinars like this one and I'm excited to see many of you have attended those, thank you. We feature experts in the field and we have all of our webinars available archived on our website to access at any time. Most of them are about an hour in length and you are able to access a copy of the presentation, supplemental resource lists, a Managing anniversaries and Memorial events. The impacts of lead exposure on learning, and also trauma for schools which is a really important topic right now. We encourage you to go and look at search and find what best fits your needs. We now have a search function on that page to help really hone in on the content that you need. if we have an upcoming scheduled webinar you can click on register now to sign up and attend and we typically host these on a monthly basis. So this information will rotate through as we are updating it. Next slide please. We also specialized training packages in the topics that you see in the screen. These are packages the materials putting PowerPoint resources and sometimes a tabletop exercise as well, these can be used to solve teach or instruct others in a professional developing setting. Soon we will be adding topics of these as well like creating a memorandum of understanding, managing and addressing adult sexual misconduct. Next slide please. We also offer several online courses based on best practices from the federal government on school emergency operations planning development. Topics including foundational CORESim provides users with gentling about all aspects of nursing and plan development and this is the information that we shared about the six step planning process, this is all included in one of these courses and this includes information on forming a collaborative planning team, conducting assessments, and plan view implementation and maintenance. As you can see we have five advanced topics. These are little bit of a shorter course and these have information other important elements in emergency management planning and focus on school EOPs and you can see it's developing can't sue a of operations annexin large events and other topics like that. With that I will turn it back to Janelle so she can tell you about even more of our resources. Genomic thank you so much, Bronwyn. Along with the resources that Bronwyn just shared we also maintain a toll-free form line of email so we can hear from you. We are here to serve you and we have staff available during email and phone to respond to your direct requests for technical assistance on a variety of topics from questions about registering for a webinar or scheduling a training event to topical inquiries about issues and emergency management preparedness. Just remember again that we are always here to help you in your school safety needs. Some of the rest TA topics for which we have provided support include general planning for active shooter situations, keeping young children calm in an active shooter situation, understanding run hide fight for individuals with disabilities, as well as ensuring access and functional needs are integrated into overall planning. Next slide. We also maintain a community of practice which is a private password-protected area of our website that is for practitioners like yourselves to engage with one another in discussion. We encourage you to take advantage of this private space and to create a community huddle for your planning team at the local, regional, or state-level. In the past we have created a community huddle for charter school superintendents in the state of Texas to share information with their peers and support a peer-to-peer networking group. We also created community huddle for hurricane Harvey, peer-to-peer mentoring groups so we can discuss and share lessons learned, challenges, and resources related to hurricane Harvey and previous and future emergencies and connect with peers in school administration. In order to really maximize your membership get in the habit of using the community of practice as your primary sharing tool with your colleagues across the nation. We invite you to take a moment today to join and then to get into the practice of logging in on a daily basis. Builds of the COP into your routine and don't be afraid to ask your peers questions and share your thoughts. That's exactly why we designed this space. The more you engaged, the more everyone will get out of this tool. Next slide. Our emergency management virtual toolkit is something you can use to populate your own website with content. It contains the latest federal emergency management training and technical assistance resources and information for schools, and it is divided into three sections. Developing high-quality EOPs, engaging youths and the school community, and connecting with other emergency management practitioners. We are actually in the process of updating it again this year. We developed this resource-based toolkit for state education agencies, state school safety centers, regional education agencies, school districts and schools so that they can quickly and easily disseminate current information on school emergency management to their constituents. To get started with this toolkit you just have to visit our website, register to download it onto your website, and you will receive instructions for installation and a confirmation email. Additionally we have posted a webinar focused specifically on this toolkit and its installation process, so you can do that at any time and we encourage you to check that out for more information, and as always you can reach out to us if you need support as you download that tool and any others on our site. Next slide. Another great way for you to engage with us is via Twitter. Our handle is REMS TA center and we post daily to promote resources and engage in discussions on school safety and higher education safety topic. Additionally we host Twitter chats on predetermined themes. We do this because again we want to hear from you and make sure that you chime in and ask and answer questions that we pose. We typically host webinars, web chats after our webinars and we are going to be hosting a REMS chat with an expert next week on higher education campus safety. Again we encourage you to follow us and to stay tuned for our chat with REMS chat, a REMS chat with an expert chat, as well as to check out where we are in the field. If you follow our REMS on the road you will be able to track trainings that we host throughout the country as well as conferences we are attending across the nation. This week we are actually in attendance at the national association of school psychologists annual conference, so if you or any of your partners are there we encourage you to stop by and say hello to our colleagues as well. Again please use the REMS on the road hashtag if you are attending the training or if you just want to stop by and say hello. Next slide. Before we end we want to leave you with a few action steps to consider and to remember that school preparedness is really not a one and done activity. It is an evolving field that requires ongoing learning like anything else. Not only do the types of emergencies we face continue to evolve but the way in which we respond and recover to them does as well. Emergency management is a growing and developing field and in staying abreast of these changes both locally and nationally, we can all become better prepared for what is ahead. And even the inevitable unknown. A few action items, encourage your colleagues to consider how they will and can support education agencies before, during, and after emergencies. Participate in planning efforts hosted by education agencies to support whole school community preparedness. Increase the capacity of schools to respond by sharing information with each other and those key stakeholders who support school and campus safety efforts. And also consider how you and your agency can take steps to ensure that schools across the country are prepared to respond to the public, medical, and mental health impacts of local, state, and national emergency. Next slide. And with that we thank you so much for joining us today. Please remember again that you can connect with the REMS TA center in a variety of ways including our toll thief phone lines and email at info at REMS TA center dot org, and again be sure to follow us on Twitter for daily updates and activities, and thank you so much for your time today. This does conclude our webinar. ANGELA BROWN: Thank you Janelle, we will not transition to our Q&A session. Jonathan, can you read the first question please? I can, it's a long question, I will read the second half, from an anonymous attendee who asks is there any thinking S2 coming up with templates or software specifically geared to helping these very small school districts, like less than 500 students, to have them better meet the necessary requirements to better protect students and staff. BRONWYN ROBERTS: I can start. I had a chance to read this whole question, thank you for asking it. We definitely are very sensitive to the fact that a lot of districts and schools out there do not have the resources to be able to devote to a full-time staff person, a dedicated staff person. And quite often emergency management and emergency planning is a shared responsibility while the person is doing likely a bunch of other things. We completely understand that, and it's a common problem not just for small districts but also large as well. So that's one good thing, we had a question about whether our resources are free, and they are. What we try to do is create tools and resources that can help you to if you have that limitation to be able to do things faster and do things easier and to understand what things to do. I talked about we have the plan generation software. That's something you can use to actually walk through and create your own plan, and we tried to, as I said, teach information during the tool or as you are using the tool to be able to understand the process better while also producing something at the end. Madeline, do you want to add? MADELINE SULLIVAN: Yes, that was an excellent answer Bronwyn, and yes we are all very sensitive to that. Another thing I'm always encouraging folks is that we spoke earlier about the wide lens that all hazards approach, and we spoke about building up with everyday people and practices. There are so many things that everybody in the school does every day where if we just add an extra consideration or have a one conversation more, we are also helping build that connection to school safety. We do attendance every day. What would it be, how does that process relate to accounting for all persons in an evacuated school building. School reunification, twice a day, you are experts across the community. Now let's think about how we would modify that a tiny bit. Those are some key activities that already support you and that demonstrates to you a number of additional people that you can work with to help with those plans. Another one that I think everyone should consider are the existing groups in schools that already exist to support multitier to interventions and support as well as the teams that look to support a student and identify maybe whether or not they are eligible to receive services. These two groups are experts in behavior and communication assessment. So if they were to look through that wider lens and consider additional possibilities when they are doing all of their analysis and planning, it can help serve that role as a threat assessment team and most of the expertise is right there and you just need a little extra training. So I encourage you to take a look at everything everyone in schools are already doing for teaching and learning. And then we all know how much you do to keep kids safe all day and every day. Sometimes when you formalize it or write it down you can better organize and identify those commonalities and grow from there, and also think about who you have already and what their expertise is and how they can contribute. Thank you for that. Our next question comes from [can't understand] who asks what informational resources does REMS have specific to planning for students with disabilities. JANELLE WILLIAMS HUGHES: I can answer that question. We have created a variety of resources specific to integrating the needs with individuals who have access and functional needs as well as disabilities into school EOP planning. And as soon as I finished speaking I will put up some topics for support. We encourage you to visit the website and the topic resources section. And that section we have organized everything into topic areas that I think is really going to make it a little bit easier for you to find all of the related resources that you need there. Within that section we actually have a page that is specifically related to access and functional needs, and again I'm going to just type that into the chat right now. But we have webinars, fact sheets, and resources in a variety of formats to support the needs around that topical area. So I have just placed the topic specific resources link in the chat, and I will also share directly to the webinar for support as well. Madeline, did you have anything to add? BRONWYN ROBERTS: I think you were on mute Madeline. MADELINE SULLIVAN: Thank you, yes, again this is a powerful opportunity to go to the very people in the building that work on this topic every day. Most importantly the students. Many of the accommodations and modifications they use to fully access the general education environment, they can be transformed, or an excellent starting point for your emergency effort. Once again being with the everyday people and practices and you are much further along than you ever knew. Thank you. The next question comes from Daniel Hann, I think this will probably before Madeline. What model is the behavioral threat assessment training based on? MADELINE SULLIVAN: Thank you Jonathan very much. There's a lot of talk about threat assessment recently so this is a very topical question and an important one. Use ago the Department of Education, the US Secret Service, and the FBI collaborated on a very comprehensive long-term rigorous research study of 39 school shootings that had taken place in the past 30 years. This was a rigorous research study that included interviews with both the school shooters and the bystanders, focusing on the events and the teachers and parents as applicable as well as a review of records and such. From this they found there is no profile. However, there were 10 common features and characteristics of all of these school shooters. From this they worked to modify the threat assessment model used by the Secret Service and customize it to schools. There has never been another study that was rigorous research, there has been review of open source materials and such and anecdotal materials, but this is the only rigorous study. So whatever model someone chooses, make sure it is based off of the actual research. And then furthermore, there is a number of models out there. Never let any of them exhaust the organic conversations that will stem from considering these findings. I don't remember the specific question, is it which one we recommend? If that's the case we are going to say, I will tell you I recommend the REMS TA center model and training and to use that as a base, and to further customize it to meet the needs of your school community including your local mental health agencies and law enforcement agencies because they are going to need to be a part of that process. Again, it is a shared responsibility, so you want to take that shared approach. With that if you go to our website and look under training, we have in person training and online training as well. And then that all stems from that Secret Service US Department of Education and Federal Bureau of investigation c that was conducted over a period of three years from 2001 to 2003, it was culty safe school initiative. So thank you, and Bronwyn or Janelle, did you want to add anything? BRONWYN ROBERTS: That was a great summer, thank you metal in. For the training we offer we did consider the models that are common in the field on the ones that are most frequently referenced like Salem Kaiser, the Virginia model, and what we did instead of going through and, as Madeline said, recommending one, we considered a canvas of the field of the most common what common elements are most important. That is what we speak to in the training itself, these are the kinds of things that you should consider when creating your own. Thank you. Next I'm going to reference a comment that was made in the chat section. It was from Paul who said many schools I've been to do not consider whether situations and what happens on school buses. The question that comes from this is how specific tenure planning get? JANELLE WILLIAMS HUGHES: I ca planning tenants should be as specific as possible. When conducting planning you want to think first of all about the threat or hazard, and then you want to think about all of those emergency functions that are going to need to be activated in the event an emergency occurs. We talked earlier about the recommendations outlined in developing high-quality school operations plans. They recommend the creation of threat and hazard specific annexes, as well as functional annexes. In the context of school transportation safety, we would recommend that an actual annexes developed specific to that and the outlines, goals, schools, objectives, roles and responsibilities specific to school transportation safety. We would also encourage you to think about those functional annexes and which ones might need to be activated and how perhaps they would need to be updated to take into account those action steps that need to take place in the event of a school transportation emergency. So we really do encourage you to look at it from a holistic perspective. Bronwyn, Madeline, anything you would like to add to that? BRONWYN ROBERTS: I think that's perfect, exactly what you said. The guidance and the six step planning process is really designed to be able to work through the courses of action thing for things that are specific. So certainly from the basic level to the most complex situations, we want you to be ready. MADELINE SULLIVAN: Yes, and I'm also thinking about the school planning principles. All settings, all times. We want to use scenario-based planning. Just like in education with our curriculum development when we do our instruction and guided practice and assessment, we want to triangulate from our plans to our training in our exercises. And and that training and exercises are also going to help you further detail or consider more when you are doing scenario-based planning. So yes, use the planning principles, use the six steps, work with your partners, and remember you don't do it all overnight. Be open to reviewing it with your partners too, and even through our tools that make the collaboration much easier. Sometimes if you are very familiar with one another's points of view and you're working together, you could just a little bit online independent and wait for feedback and such. ANGELA BROWN: We would like to thank everyone for joining us today. We have actually gone over our time. Just a reminder today's presentation has been recorded and you can earn continuing education for your participation. Please follow the instructions found on emergency dot CBC dot go four Ts epic, the course SX code is EPIC 0219 with all capital letters. Madeline, Bronwyn, and Janelle, we thank you for your time today in presenting this webinar.