Preparing public school personnel to effectively respond to a large-scale crisis: Evaluation of an emergency management training

Objective: School administrators, teachers, and support staff are required to receive annual education and training regarding the implementation of emergency management procedures. School personnel recognize the importance of school safety and the majority of school systems ensure their plans are up to date as mandated by federal and state legislation; however, they rarely conduct comprehensive training and drills coordinated with local, state, or federal emergency responders due to limited time and funding.Methods: This study examined the impact of an emergency management program as a means of improving school responses to crises situations. A multidisciplinary team developed a comprehensive program to train all school personnel to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from situational crises that could occur in the school setting. The program infused current guidelines and theories of behavior change. A train-the-trainer model was used for dissemination, with school administrators and crisis management team (CMT) members from each school trained to educate all school personnel in their respective buildings.Results: One hundred sixty CMT members were trained to deliver the training to 950 school personnel. Comparisons of the pretest and post-test measures demonstrated that the train-the-trainer intervention significantly changed knowledge of policies and procedures, as well as school personnel’s perceptions of risk and efficacy regarding potential crises and their management.Conclusions: The significant finding of increased knowledge following the training among both CMT members and other school personnel indicates that the curriculum and train-the-trainer model had a positive effect.