1. Crisis Communication in Schools: Understanding Current Challenges and Opportunities
Tyler Page, M.A.
Ph.D. Student
Brooke Liu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Communication
Director of the START Risk Communication & Resilience Program
University of Maryland
Holly Roberts, M.A.
START Program Manager and Researcher, Risk Communication and Resilience
Michael Egnoto, Ph.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor
This project was made possible with funding from the CDC Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) Cooperative Agreement provided through the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Preparedness and Response, via the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this article are those of the author(s) and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene or the U.S. Government.

2. 2015

3. Research Questions
RQ1a: How prepared are schools to respond to crisis events? RQ1b: What templates have schools prepared in the event of a crisis? RQ2: How prepared are schools to respond to media inquiries in the event of a crisis? RQ3: How do schools use social media to prepare for and respond to crisis situations? RQ4: How readable and engaging is the crisis content published by schools on social media? RQ5: Do schools follow the United States Department of Education’s guidelines for using social media during crises? RQ6: How do schools disseminate messages in the event of a crisis?

4. Methods Social Media Content Analysis Survey of Professionals
611 posts over 11 months
Survey of Professionals
132 education professionals
Interviews with Professionals
17 interviews

5. RQ1: Preparation

6. RQ2: Media Readiness
All below 50%!

7. RQ3: Social Media Use

8. RQ4: Social Media Readability
The Flesch-Kincaid tests are assessed by a computer program; however, the length and content made it impossible for the computer to assess the readability of a small percentage of these posts. Therefore, these posts were listed as not rated.

9. RQ5: Department of Education Guidelines
3 Used Regularly, > 80%
Closure notification, safety information, news alerts
7 Barely Used, < 1%
Full scale exercises, reunification, re-opening, temporary relocation, thank volunteers, counseling information, & how community can help
4 Untestable

10. RQ6: Message Dissemination

11. Interviews Increase social media capabilities
“Hmm, I’m not sure, what do you mean by social media? I know that they have a… I’m trying to think of what the… they have a school messenger system. I don’t know whether that’s what you are thinking of or not…”
Concerns over being short staffed and relying on community partners
Improve students’ preparedness
Varied by crisis type
“That’s a tough one with the little ones. You don’t want to scare them. You know, we’ve had that discussion numerous times as we really don’t want to frighten them when we do this, because we don’t want them upset, and we don’t want them to fear that this place is not safe. Maybe you do have to, in a sense, give them that “the world is not a safe place” and you hate to take that away from little guys.”
Student willingness

12. Interviews Improve parents’ preparedness Establish crisis ownership
Lack of parent preparedness affects crisis response
On-site confusion – “Follow the direction of the teacher”
Increased need for crowd control at parent re-unification points
Establish crisis ownership
“So I think because the schools have the understanding that they’re just to quickly respond to the crisis, but not handle it. So I think there’s a gap there in terms of you know, are we supposed to be training for something, or just avoid it, and then when it happens, wait on someone else to come handle it?”

13. Interviews Optimize media involvement Improve training
“I think we’ve created a culture in society where everyone expects to be told immediately. But, when you’re dealing with the safety of 37-38,000 students here in [removed for anonymization] County, it’s not always in our best interest to tell people right away. We want to again, secure the situation before we start sharing that information with people.”
Understand that they should “be careful” but weren’t really clear on guidelines
Improve training
Fear of trainings becoming mundane and “lax”
Concern regarding “over training” where you “train so much you don’t have time to do your job”
Suggested partnering with neighboring schools, making trainings engaging, creating more timely trainings, making them focused on school issues, and giving them during summer/winter so people stay in that mindset

14. Interviews Prepare substitutes Sandy Hook
Lack of trust (won’t give substitutes keys)
Possible under utilized community member
Not invited to meetings but highly invested

15. Final Recommendations & Conclusion
Training and templates are needed
Prepare more people for more issues
Parents
Substitute teachers
Nurses
Training should include resources for special needs children
Improve evaluation process

16. Tyler Page tpage@umd.edu Holly Roberts hroberts@start.umd.edu
Contact
Tyler Page Holly Roberts