EOP Overview and Resources

School Emergency Operations Planning

Many Emergency Operations Plans have similar structures, but can utilized differing terminology. The FEMA model is a helpful process for developing a high quality EOPs. Additional Crisis Response Plans/Emergency Operations Plans are available in the "Additional Resources" section of the website.
 

Structure of Emergency Operations Plans:

1. Prevention,for the purposes of this guide, means the capabilities necessary to avoid, deter, or stop an imminent crime or threatened or actual mass casualty incident. Prevention is the action schools take to prevent a threatened or actual incident from occurring.

2. Protection means the capabilities to secure schools against acts of violence and man-made or natural disasters. Protection focuses on ongoing actions that protect students, teachers, staff, visitors, networks, and property from a threat or hazard.

3. Mitigation means the capabilities necessary to eliminate or reduce the loss of life and property damage by lessening the impact of an event or emergency. In this document, “mitigation” also means reducing the likelihood that threats and hazards will happen.

4. Response means the capabilities necessary to stabilize an emergency once it has already happened or is certain to happen in an unpreventable way; establish a safe and secure environment; save lives and property; and facilitate the transition to recovery.

5. Recovery means the capabilities necessary to assist schools affected by an event or emergency in restoring the learning environment

 

It may be helpful to first become familiar with the NATIONAL INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (NIMS) and the INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM in order to understand the framework of an EOP.

NATIONAL INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (NIMS)

INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM - FEMA

 

First Steps for Creating Effective EOPs:

Step 1: Form a collaborative planning team at your school

Step 2: Understand the situations your school would like to address

Step 3: Determine your goals and objectives for those situations

Step 4: Development plans to reach those goals (identifying courses of action)

Step 5: Review plan and prepare plan for school board approval

Step 6: Implement and improve your plan

 

Steps for Implementing and Improving Effective EOPs:

Step 1: Form an emergency operations implementation team

Step 2: Decide an process for sharing information with students, staff and parents

Step 3: Create partnerships for responding to a crisis

Step 4: Coordinate emergency drills

Step 5: Evaluate the effectiveness of plans and their execution

Step 6: Modify emergency operations plans to reflect lessons learned