The School Crisis Planning Guide: How to Build, Prepare, and Sustain an Effective Crisis Response Team

In an era of multiple complex crises, every K-12 school needs a team that’s fully prepared to take immediate action after traumatic events, deaths, and other major losses. This practical planning guide empowers school administrators and leaders to build, train, and sustain highly effective school crisis teams.

Developed by an author team with decades of experience―including David Schonfeld, the country’s go-to authority on responding to school crisis―this urgently needed book wraps everything leaders need to know and do into one accessible, comprehensive package. Readers will get critical information on the need for school crisis preparedness, the nuts and bolts of establishing and strengthening efficient crisis teams, and best practices and strategies for responding to different types of school crisis.

A school leader’s ultimate guide to proactive preparation, this book will help new and existing crisis teams respond quickly after traumatic events and loss and ensure the physical, social, and emotional wellbeing of students, staff, and the community.

Learn How To:

• Apply seven guiding principles for building a strong school crisis team and crisis response plan
• Implement the authors’ effective school crisis response model used in thousands of schools nationwide
• Reduce the negative impacts of crisis events and support healing and recovery
• Establish and train a crisis team that’s equipped to respond at any time
• Use an adaptable checklist of actions for your team to take after a crisis
• Design and implement tabletop exercises and drills that will strengthen preparedness without overwhelming participants
• Make appropriate decisions about memorialization and commemoration
• Provide effective staff support and professional self-care in the aftermath of a crisis involving traumatic exposure and deaths

Practical Materials: Give your team real-world guidance with vignettes, case studies, and tabletop exercises based on actual crisis situations. Plus, support your action plan with links to helpful resources, downloadable crisis notification templates, and training materials for school administration and staff.

David J. Schonfeld, M.D., Director, National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement (NCSCB) and Director, Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Cincinnati Childrenâ (TM)s Hospital Medical Center, has provided consultation, technical assistance, and training in the areas of pediatric bereavement and school crisis preparedness and response for more than 20 years. He has provided presentations at national and international meetings and worked with communities throughout the United States and abroad (including Europe, Great Britain, Asia, the Middle East, Scandinavia, Latin America, and Africa). In 1991, Dr. Schonfeld established the School Crisis Response Program at Yale University School of Medicine, where he provided training to tens of thousands of school-based personnel throughout the country and technical assistance in hundreds of school crisis events. Dr. Schonfeld has consulted with schools during the aftermath of numerous school (including school shootings and other school violence) and national crisis events. From 2001 to 2004, he consulted to the New York City Department of Education and coordinated training for school crisis teams in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and provided training to more than 1,000 district- and school-level crisis teams within the system. In 2005, Dr. Schonfeld was awarded funding by the September 11th Childrenâ (TM)s Fund and the National Philanthropic Trust to establish the NCSCB. Dr. Schonfeld has worked with schools coping with large-scale natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005; Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas, in 2008; and the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China. Dr. Schonfeld is currently a member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters, the Disaster Mental Health Subcommittee of the National Biodefense Science Board, and the American Academy of Pediatricsâ (TM)s Disaster Preparedness Advisory Council. He is actively engaged in school-based research involving childrenâ (TM)s understanding of and adjustment to serious illness and death and school-based interventions to promote adjustment and risk prevention.

Marcia Quackenbush, M.S., MFT, CHES, Senior Editor and Health Education Specialist, ETR Associates, Scotts Valley, California, is a licensed family therapist and certified health education specialist. She has more than 15 years of clinical mental health experience, much of which is focused on children, adolescents, and families of people living with life-changing condition; or people coping with terminal illness in themselves or family members. Ms. Quackenbush has written extensively in the health education field, publishing numerous articles and books on a range of topics.