Date of Award

2012

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

School disaster planning is important because schools are places of frequent mass gathering. An estimated 53 million children in the United States attend public and private schools each day. As mass gathering places, schools are prone to mass injury in a natural disaster and unfortunately may serve as a terrorist target (Graham, 2007). Schools must prepare for the worst and hope for the best, because the worst disaster to occur is not preparing for disaster in the first place. Comprehensive crisis management plans must be in place, practiced, revisited, and altered to remain effective.

Community-based strategies have been successful in reducing crime and violence by utilizing a problem solving approach to intervention (U.S. Departments of Education & Justice, 1998). Research-based practices suggest that the most promising prevention and intervention strategies involve all participants in the community who contribute to a student's education, such as administrators, teachers, family, students, support staff and community members (Quinn et al., 1998).

The purpose of this study was to determine the status of school crisis preparedness and to identify any collaboration related to preparing for crises in schools. An analysis was conducted to evaluate any collaboration noted between school administrators and other community resources that indicate specific ways that administrators may be preparing for crisis situations in their schools.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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