Most of the time, a school safety plan focuses on emergency preparedness during the school day. While those times are a school’s top priority, its obligation to keep its students, staff and visitors safe extends beyond classroom hours. Creating contingency plans for after-school events can be challenging, but a comprehensive, campus-wide school safety solution can help.
Crises can Happen On School Campuses during After-School Events
After-school events can be an afterthought in administrative planning, but those are the times when the school is often most vulnerable.
Students, teachers, staff, parents, transportation specialists, and administrators are in and out of the buildings, walking through busy parking lots, and likely covering most of the campus. The larger community enters your school’s doors during sporting events and performances. These events are signs of a healthy school, but each comes with a new safety concern.
A Comprehensive School Safety Plan Includes an After-School Safety Plan
Here are a few of the more common events every administration must include in its comprehensive safety plan:
Food Allergies
Most after-school events that involve visitors also involve concession stands run by non-professional volunteers. Even the most well-intentioned band parent could forget to ask a customer if they have any food allergies.
Food allergy concerns go beyond the concession stand. After-school events often involve food, whether a pizza party or a shared snack during a club meeting. During after-school activities, there are simply fewer faculty and staff on campus, meaning there are fewer people who can respond to a student who is having an anaphylactic reaction.
Heat-related Illnesses
The CDC reported higher heat-related emergency room visits and deaths in 2023. Heat-related illness is especially dangerous during summer months and more prevalent for outdoor events. For students who wear heavier uniforms or protective gear, like members of the football team or marching band, heat exhaustion is a real threat.
Heat-related illness affects more than just athletes. Fans and family members participating in games, practices, and performances are also susceptible to excessive heat exposure.
Over-exposure to the sun or extreme heat without adequate hydration can lead to nausea, dizziness, headache, fainting, dehydration, and even death.
Cardiac Events and Asthma Attacks
Strenuous activity, excitement, weather, or stress can lead to cardiac events such as heart or asthma attacks, especially in individuals with pre-existing conditions.
These are common conditions at sporting events, plays, performances, and even during low-impact competitive activities like spelling bees.
Violence-Related Incidents
Healthy competition can create growth and build community, but competition can escalate into violence if the balance is tipped. And not just with the competitors. Fights between opposing fans, spectators and performers, and even escalating small arguments, are not unheard of during after-school events. And any situation involving violence can quickly escalate into an emergency.
Substance Abuse
Any time a large group assembles with less supervision than usual, it creates a risk. At the fringe of those groups are those who participate in risky behavior like consuming drugs or alcohol.
Any intoxicant introduced to a school campus creates a safety risk, most important to your students and anyone present. Substance abuse can also lead to overdoses and bad reactions that require an immediate, and sometimes lifesaving, emergency response.
Environmental Security Threats
As with any public gathering, there’s always the potential threat of fire, environmental risks, or an active shooter. During these most surprising and traumatic events, administrators, faculty, and staff must be prepared and equipped to protect their students and the larger community.
No one risk is overwhelming, but the culmination of so many different risk opportunities reinforces the importance of creating a comprehensive school safety plan to address these events.
The Importance of Campus-Wide Coverage And Precise Location During Incident Response
The ability of your emergency response team to monitor and precisely locate an incident on your entire campus directly impacts your team’s response time.
A school safety plan should include campus monitoring tools that allow two-way, real-time, campus-wide communication. Relying on manual communication devices, like phones and two-way radios, requires adequate signal coverage and an active and attentive participant on both ends of the line. And using one-to-one communication tools during an emergency response is literally playing a game of telephone.
The most effective school safety plans also include precise location technology and can relay the exact location of safety assets to first responders. Traditional, physical maps are difficult to update and responders may struggle with locating critical tools like defibrillators, fire extinguishers, or first aid kits that may have been moved. Dynamic mapping technology with real-time integration is the best way to give responders the knowledge they need to save time.
A quick, comprehensive emergency response is the best way to ensure the best outcome for your school and the community you are committed to keeping safe.
The Role of Innovative Technology in Enhancing Safety
Luckily, administrators don’t have to approach their school safety plan alone. Advances in safety technology include wearable technology for teachers and precise location digital maps.
With wearable technology, faculty and staff can request assistance or even trigger a campus-wide alert from their ID badge. Digital maps connected to the safety network can locate those alerts with pinpoint accuracy anywhere on your campus. When visitor management systems are integrated into digital mapping technology, it adds an additional layer of protection with the ability to locate all visitors within the building.
Dynamic digital mapping, real-time locating capabilities, and easy-to-use wearable panic buttons for school and district staff enable educators to plan for and respond faster to emergencies.
After emergencies occur, innovative technology gives administrators the ability to review insightful data that can help them make adjustments or improvements to their safety plans. It can help administrators reduce the time needed to manage inventory by monitoring critical information for every piece of safety equipment and its maintenance plan.
How Integrating CENTEGIX’s Technology Can Create a Culture of Safety
Creating a safe and secure environment is of the utmost importance for schools, even after class. Safer environments ensure the well-being of students, teachers, and staff. They also play a crucial role in academic performance and teacher satisfaction.
CrisisAlert is an educator’s peace of mind at the push of a button. It’s a wearable panic button for schools that empowers teachers and staff to get help anywhere on campus with a button. With single-button activation, support is on the way when and where they need it.
One teacher shared their experience of how CrisisAlert empowered them to get help. “The 6th graders were having a dance right after school and I was following the mass of students towards the cafeteria.” A student fell down and was experiencing a medical emergency. The teacher continued, “She was able to walk, so while I held her walking away from the crowd, I pressed my alert button. The student was having a panic attack and administrators were able to respond and find me.”
Digital maps of your school’s campus–including buildings and safety assets–are critical to your school safety plan. CENTEGIX’s dynamic digital mapping solution, Safety Blueprint, creates maps to give accurate and precise location details of your school campus so help can arrive at precisely the right location and access your safety assets quickly.
Technology does more than make school safety planning easier. An all-inclusive, campuswide technology solution saves valuable minutes during an emergency response.
By partnering with a reliable school safety technology provider like CENTEGIX, you can create a culture of safety and security in your school, leading to a better learning environment and a stronger community. Schedule a custom demo to experience our innovative technology first-hand.