A crisis management team can play a significant and crucial role in preventing tragedies if appropriately executed. Nobody wants to consider the possibility of a shooting at their own school, but it’s a genuine risk facing millions of students every day. Preparing for a school shooting is the best way to minimize potential fatalities and prevent a shooting from happening in the first place. Schools should first form a crisis management team to create a plan for this scenario. If you insure schools with insurance for active shooters, you should offer them the following advice.

Ways a Crisis Management Team Can Help

A crisis management team can generate effective strategies that ultimately save lives.

Recruit People Who Understand Active Shooters

When your clients assemble the roster of their crisis management team, they should include professionals who understand active shooters. It may consist of psychologists, law enforcement officers, or academics specializing in the subject. These experts will be able to bring unique insights into the conversation and help other team members better understand active shooters, too. It’s, unfortunately, true that there are often many warning signs before a shooting takes place, and these professionals can help school leadership identify red flags.

Enlist Help From Faculty and Staff

Experts will play an essential role in helping your clients mitigate the risk of active shooters, but faculty and staff will play an equally important role. It’s necessary for a crisis management team to include adequate representation from within the school, too. Faculty and staff can contribute to this team by sharing their interactions with students, observing problems, and identifying patterns indicative of potential violence. Teachers are often the first to notice concerning behaviors, so they are an essential component of this effort.

Put Plans Into Action With Practice

The ultimate goal of any crisis management team should be to prevent or contain an active shooter situation. To this end, every school must have a clear protocol that outlines the proper procedure if an active shooter situation does emerge. Simply having this procedure isn’t enough, though — a crisis management team should also lead the school in drills so that the whole school understands what to do in such a scenario. It will help students and staff respond confidently if they encounter a crisis.

Get Insurance Coverage for Active Shooters

There are more school shootings in the U.S. than in any other country. It is an unfortunate distinction, but schools can minimize risk by assembling a crisis management team and formulating an active shooter strategy. You can provide your clients with additional peace of mind by connecting them with an insurance policy that covers active shooters. More importantly, you can collaborate with them to address and minimize the

About PGUI

Professional Governmental Underwriters, Inc., is a full-service risk management company dedicated to assisting public, educational and non-profit entities in the management of their professional liability exposures including educators liability insurance. We are dedicated to providing state-of-the-art professional underwriting management and loss control advisory services on behalf of our designated carriers. For more information, call us toll-free at (800) 586-6502.