Letter from the Secretary of Education

THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20202

February 11, 2002

On January 8, President Bush made an unprecedented commitment to America's future by signing the No Child Left Behind Act, which takes historic steps to bring comprehensive change to our system of Education. Over the next two days, I hosted meetings with many Chief State School Officers from across the country to share ideas and strengthen relationships. I believe your colleagues who attended the meetings went home with the same vision for partnership and sense of energetic optimism the president and I hold.

As we work together to bring positive and meaningful change to our schools, we must simultaneously recognize and adapt to the changes thrust upon us by the events of September 11, 2001. My office has worked diligently to offer support and guidance to assist schools and parents in coping with the new and extraordinary challenges we all face. We have also learned critical information that will help us ensure our schools are secure and safe learning environments. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education is planning several activities and initiatives to prepare our schools further for potential threats affecting our students, educators, and their families.

This document offers detailed information to bring you up to date on the specific actions taken by the Department of Education to address the needs of those directly and indirectly affected by September 11. It also provides several important lessons learned with respect to threat assessment and crisis management in our schools, as well as actions educators and communities can take to implement effective policies to protect our children from both internal and external threats. I encourage you to share this information with members of your staff working on safety and crisis management issues.

Whether we are working to raise expectations for academic achievement or seeking to increase safety within our schools, I am committed to helping you provide an optimistic and hopeful future for every American child.

Sincerely,

/s/

Rod Paige

Overview of Activities, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps

The Department of Education has worked to offer all possible assistance to the victims of the September 11 attacks as well as help the many individuals and groups that were indirectly affected. Note: The information that follows was compiled and distributed to education leaders shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many of the activities that are mentioned have since taken place and many of the products that are mentioned have since been made available.

• Information on the Department's Website: Immediately following September 11, the Department provided resource information on its website to help teachers and parents identify reputable sources for advice on helping students deal with the crisis.

• School Emergency Response to Violence (SERV) Grants: Grants were provided to the New York City Board of Education and the state departments of education in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia to help schools reestablish safe and secure learning environments.

• Trauma Experts to New York City: After working with officials from New York City Public Schools to understand their immediate needs, the department identified several experts in trauma response and provided support for their travel to New York City to assist in the development of a strategy for dealing with the effects of September 11.

• Trauma Response Training: The department sponsored a one-day workshop on responding to traumatic events for officials from nonpublic schools in New York City. Experts from the University of California at Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School System conducted the training.

Lessons Learned and Recommendations

To gain a better understanding of actions taken in response to September 11, the Department has met with educators, students, teachers, administrators, law enforcement officials, medical experts and mental health professionals from around the country. These meetings were very productive, and the following items were determined to be critical elements to ensuring successful crisis management.

• We strongly urge schools to have a plan for dealing with crises, such as school shootings, suicides, and major accidents, as well as large-scale disasters, such as the events of September 11, that have a significant impact on schools throughout the country. We recommend that every school review its school safety plan to ensure that it is comprehensive and addresses a wide range of crisis situations. Schools that do not have a school safety plan should implement a plan immediately. Some suggestions regarding issues that should be addressed in a school safety plan are included at the end of this document.

• Effective school safety plans are developed with input from, and support of, a variety of public and private agencies, including agencies representing law enforcement, fire departments, emergency services, victim services, and agencies responsible for homeland security. To be effective, school safety plans must communicate goals and assignments clearly and be updated regularly to remain relevant over time. Whether schools are reviewing existing plans or developing new ones, they should seek to include agencies with relevant expertise that may not have routinely partnered with schools.

• Developing a comprehensive school safety plan is only part of the task. Schools should conduct practice drills on a regular basis, and the results of practice activities should be reviewed to determine if revisions are needed. Practices can be incorporated within regularly scheduled safety activities, such as fire drills. Schools are encouraged to maintain contact with agencies that respond to crisis, such as local law enforcement and fire departments, emergency preparedness agencies, and the National Guard, to ensure that schools are included in any community-wide emergency preparedness drills.

• During a crisis, there is no guarantee that normal chains of communication, command, and control will work as intended. Communications between schools and central headquarters can be disrupted, delayed, or otherwise impeded during a crisis. School-level administrators cannot be certain that information, guidance, or orders will be available, and they must have the skills and confidence to respond to any crisis situation they might face. School administrators are encouraged to consider several options to overcoming communication difficulties. First they may want to delegate decision-making authority to building-level principals during times of crisis. School district officials should work closely with law enforcement officials and other emergency service agencies in advance of a crisis situation to ensure that clear lines of authority are established and well known. Finally, we encourage officials to work with experts in the telecommunications field to understand what communication links are likely to be affected in certain circumstances and explore back-up systems or plans, including "low-tech" or non-traditional communication strategies.

• Accurate and timely information on a crisis needs to be provided to students, family members, and faculty when appropriate. Absent such information, rumors and false information are likely to spread, which can cause additional problems for school and law enforcement officials. Therefore, school districts should develop a detailed procedure for providing accurate and timely information to students, parents, and faculty.

• School policies that address typical problems may not provide adequate guidance regarding some situations faced by schools in recent years. Policies need to be reviewed to make sure they address a wide range of situations. We also encourage schools to work with parents, faculty, and students to develop strategies for publicizing the serious consequences associated with making threats.

• School safety plans must address issues beyond safety and consider the health and mental health needs of students, faculty, and parents that result from a crisis. Crises such as the ones experienced at Columbine and on September 11 affect students, faculty, and parents in every school district to varying degrees. When addressing health and mental health issues, school safety plans should recognize that some students, faculty, and parents might need these health-related services for long periods of time. We recommend that every school safety plan include a section that deals with recovery issues, including the health and mental health needs of students, faculty, and parents.

• Almost every community has access to the health and mental health services that can address the needs of those affected by crisis, but many school districts have not developed linkages with the organizations that can provide these services, and as a result, these services are not immediately available in the time of crisis. We encourage school districts to initiate conversations with local health and mental health providers and develop memoranda of understanding to delineate roles and responsibilities in times of crisis.

• Schools experiencing a major crisis invariably receive an outpouring of support from potential volunteers who want to help. However, few districts have a plan in place to screen volunteers to make sure they are qualified and suitable to provide services in schools. We recommend that school safety plans include a process for screening persons who volunteer to assist during a crisis. Schools may want to consider having a cadre of experts and other service providers prescreened, so they can participate in emergency response activities without delay.

• Only a few school districts have staff members who are adequately trained to deal with the results of a crisis such as a school shooting or the events of September 11. We encourage every district to designate and train a person, or group, to act as lead official(s) for response to crisis situations.

• Students are sometimes further traumatized by actions taken, often with the best intentions, by teachers, faculty, and parents. Consistently retelling or reshowing portrayals of violent events can have a traumatic effect on students. School districts are encouraged to work with mental health service providers, teachers, and parent groups to establish guidelines for activities that respect the developmental capacity of students.

Upcoming Department of Education Activities

In order to help ensure that schools and students are safe from internal and external threats, the Department of Education is planning several activities, including:

• Incorporate schools in Federal, State, and Local Emergency Planning: It is important for educators to be included in emergency planning processes, so we will work with the Office of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure that schools are routinely included in planning for emergencies.

• International Forum on Response to Terrorism: The Department of Education is hosting a meeting of educators from 10 countries that have had experience in dealing with terrorism to learn more about their experiences and how they have dealt with them. Information from this forum will be shared with educators throughout the United States.

• Teleconference on Bio-terrorism: The Department of Education is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide educators with the best science available on identifying and handling bio-terrorism threats, such as anthrax. We anticipate holding the teleconference in late winter 2002.

• Teleconference on Developing a Mental Health Response to Crisis: The Department of Education is collaborating with the Harvard School of Public Health to provide educators with the best possible information on the mental health needs of those affected by crisis. We anticipate holding this teleconference in early spring 2002.

• Threat Assessment Guide: We know that schools regularly receive threats against students and faculty, and those threats can have a detrimental effect. We are working with the U.S. Secret Service on the development of a Threat Assessment Guide. The guide, which will be released in the spring, will provide educators with practical advice on how to differentiate between persons making threats and those posing threats. The guide will be supplemented by a series of training activities.

• Bomb Threat Guide: The Department of Education has been working closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to develop and disseminate materials that will help school officials develop strategies for the prevention of bomb threats and for handling them effectively when they occur. Release is anticipated by summer 2002.