Turning plans into systems

Less than a quarter mile from a rural Siskiyou County school, an airborne pesticide release forced leaders to make rapid decisions. Staff could see the incident from campus. Traffic was backing up, and our county emergency preparedness director could not physically reach the school in time.

Yet the district leader did not have to begin from zero.

He had already talked with county staff about sheltering in place, communication and emergency roles. As conditions changed, Westley Dunkin, director of emergency preparedness at the Siskiyou County Office of Education, coordinated a call with the district leader, the sheriff’s office and county emergency management. Together, they worked through what needed to happen next, including how students would be released safely.

The response was not effortless. It was orderly because the relationships and basic expectations were already in place.

That incident reinforced something I have learned across school leadership, student services and county office work: Safety failures usually aren’t caused by a lack of care. They occur when people do not know who owns the next decision, which resource is available or how the pieces of the system connect.

A safety plan can satisfy a requirement, sit on a shelf and guide an annual drill. A safety system is different. It connects people, technology, communication, training, relationships and decision-making before an emergency occurs. It is practiced and understood well enough to function when conditions are confusing and time is limited.

For small and rural districts, building that system alone can be difficult. A superintendent may also oversee human resources, facilities, transportation, instruction and community relations. A part-time principal may be responsible for nearly every operational function at a school. County offices can expand local capacity by helping districts prepare before an incident, coordinate while it is happening and learn from it afterward.

Take the drill one step further During our interview, Dunkin put the issue plainly: “It’s more than just a fire drill.”

For many of us, school safety once meant evacuating a building, lining students up on the blacktop and returning to class. Those drills still matter, but they are only the beginning. A school may know how to evacuate. What happens when the building cannot be reentered? Where will students go? How will staff account for them? How will they be reunited with authorized caregivers? What happens the following day if the campus remains closed?

Dunkin’s advice is simple: “Take it one step further.” After an evacuation drill, ask: If this were real and we could not return to the building, what would we do now?

That question moves the drill from compliance to actual capacity. Reunification requires more than getting students outside. Staff need defined roles, accurate rosters, transportation plans, accessible emergency supplies and a way to operate when the internet or normal communication systems are unavailable.

Joshua Tarrats, director of information technology at SCOE, added another practical concern. During an emergency, schools may have several systems containing similar information. Which one is the true source? Can staff produce an accurate class roster if computers are unavailable, the network is down and everyone is under pressure? A plan is only useful if people can access the information it depends on.

Preparation also must include employees who may not be in the room when plans are written. Do teachers know their roles? Does the office staff know who communicates with families? Does the custodial team know what to do during reunification? Has anyone opened the emergency supply container recently?

During our conversation, Dunkin asked whether I knew where our own office’s emergency supply container was located.

I did not.

As a former principal and director, and now an associate superintendent supervising the department responsible for this work, I found that humbling. The supplies existed. The expertise existed. But I could not immediately identify a resource I might need during an emergency.

That moment was a useful reminder: Preparedness cannot live in the knowledge of one staff member. The people expected to lead must know the system well enough to use it.

Know who you will call The pesticide incident also showed why relationships are part of the safety infrastructure.

The district leader had already discussed shelter-in-place procedures with Dunkin and knew whom to call. Dunkin could not reach the campus because of traffic conditions, but he could still connect the school with the sheriff’s office and county emergency management, share information and help organize the response.

This is one of the most important roles a county office can play. We can provide specialized staff, connect schools with agencies operating beyond district boundaries and help leaders make sense of changing conditions. In a rural county, one road closure can make a campus inaccessible. Emergency responders may be far away. Broadband or cell service may be inconsistent. Local leaders still have to act, and the county office may have to support them from a distance.

Districts that respond well tend to take safety seriously before they need the plan. They meet with local law enforcement and fire personnel. They know their county emergency manager. They practice the parts of the response that come after the alarm. They clarify who has authority to make decisions and how information will move.

Exchanging contact information during a crisis is too late.

Tarrats framed the same lesson as a question: When a serious incident occurs, who are the people you will immediately contact? Every superintendent should be able to answer without searching through old emails.

Cybersecurity is part of the same readiness system Cybersecurity is sometimes treated as a separate technology issue. It is not. It is part of the same readiness system.

Tarrats has been through two ransomware attacks during his career. During the second, he managed the response because he was the highest-ranking person on site. Afterward, he wrote a two-page report describing what happened, where the organization struggled and what needed to change.

That short after-action report may be one of the most important safety tools he created. A crisis should not end when the immediate problem is contained. Leaders should capture what failed, what worked and what they will do differently while the details are still clear.

Tarrats also explained how much the technical environment has changed. A decade ago, many organizations treated a firewall as a wall between a trusted internal network and the outside world. Today, door-access systems, cameras, network video recorders, instructional platforms and other devices are connected. A vulnerability may sit inside a system leaders do not even think of as part of cybersecurity.

In one district review, an older network video recorder used for security cameras raised concern because it was accessible from the internet and no longer reflected current security practices. The point was not the technical label attached to the vulnerability. The leadership questions mattered more: Did the district understand the exposure? Who could offer a neutral assessment? Who owned the decision about what happened next?

Superintendents do not need to understand every technical detail. As Tarrats noted, they do need a 50,000-foot view of how their systems function and where risk may exist. They should know which devices are outdated, who monitors the network, what would happen if an account or device were compromised and who can provide an honest assessment.

That last point matters for small districts. When technology services are outsourced, vendors may offer competing recommendations, and each may have a financial interest in the solution. County technology staff can help leaders interpret the risk, ask better questions and identify where limited resources will make the greatest difference without taking the local decision away from the district.

Modern cybersecurity also requires a different mindset. Tarrats described the movement toward “zero trust”: Devices are not automatically treated as safe simply because they are inside the network. They must meet security requirements before they communicate or access information.

At the same time, security cannot become so restrictive that employees cannot use the system. “Each situation is unique,” Tarrats said. The goal is not the most complicated system. It is a system that protects the organization and remains usable.

Dunkin offered the clearest reason cybersecurity belongs in a school safety article: “We’re protecting the student, not the school.”

Schools hold student names, addresses, birth dates and other personal information associated with young people whose identities may not yet have been used or closely monitored. A cyberattack is not merely an equipment problem or interruption to business operations. It can expose students and families to long-term harm.

The threat environment is also changing quickly. Tarrats warned that artificial intelligence will increase the speed and volume of attacks. A security approach that worked in 2012 will not survive in today’s environment.

Prepare, coordinate, learn Emergency preparedness and cybersecurity may look different on the surface, but county offices support them in the same three ways.

1. We help districts prepare. That includes practicing reunification, testing access to rosters, reviewing continuity plans, identifying technology vulnerabilities and building relationships with local agencies before they are needed.

2. We help coordinate. During an incident, the county office can connect districts with emergency management, law enforcement, technology resources and other partners. We can help organize information and clarify choices even when we cannot be physically present.

3. We help districts learn. Drills, emergencies and cyber incidents should produce specific changes. Tarrats’s two-page ransomware report is a model: Document what happened, identify where the system broke down and assign the next improvement.

The county office’s role is not to replace local leadership or make every decision for a district. It is to expand local capacity so leaders do not have to build every part of the system alone.

What to do Monday morning School safety can feel overwhelming because every component connects to another. Dunkin uses a familiar question: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

A superintendent can start with three actions on Monday morning.

Build a contact list: Identify the emergency-management, law-enforcement, fire, technology and county office contacts the district would call first. Confirm that the names and numbers are current. Then begin building those relationships before an incident.

Walk one process from beginning to end: Do not stop at the easiest part. Evacuate, then test reunification. Confirm that staff can obtain accurate rosters without the internet. Identify a cyber vulnerability, then determine who owns the decision and how the risk will be reduced.

Find one blind spot: Open the emergency supply container. Ask the custodial team what its role is. Determine which connected devices are old or unpatched. Ask who can provide an honest cybersecurity assessment. Invite local responders to walk the campus.

Then document what was learned and improve one thing.

Dunkin’s advice to every superintendent was direct: “Don’t just hope it’s not going to happen there. Do something to push the needle forward.”

No single drill, device or document will make a school safe. Readiness is built through people who know their roles, relationships established before a crisis, systems that can function under pressure and the discipline to learn after something goes wrong.

County offices can help districts build that readiness, one practical action at a time.