Emergency Preparedness Planning Preparing for an emergency is a continual process of activities, which never ends. MCSS assists public, nonpublic, and private schools in their efforts to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from emergencies and disasters of all types. These processes build emergency preparedness by collaboratively evaluating school environments and creating and testing school emergency plans. This year, COMAR 14.40.06 was approved by the School Safety Subcabinet. This new regulation on data collection stipulates the dates each year that all reports from public school systems are due to the Center and specifies that school systems need to submit school emergency plans to the Center for review at least every two years. It further stipulates that school systems must submit an aggregated summary of school safety evaluations done at each school at least every two years. School Safety Evaluations In the 2023-2024 school year, nine (9) local school systems submitted an evaluation summary . These summaries found the need for additional staff training on policies regarding securing doors, as well as physical safety concerns about gaps in communications, both internally through school PA systems, and communication challenges between schools and public safety. Additionally, MCSS provided technical assistance to seven (7) private schools that were seeking to conduct safety evaluations of their schools. In addition to the recent creation of the CDC/MCSS CPTED School Safety Evaluation Tool to assist school systems with performing safety evaluations themselves, in FY2024, MCSS offered the school safety evaluation grant program to assist local education agencies with these evaluations. This program allocated three million dollars in FY2024 specifically for LEAs to perform facility assessments; re-evaluate and update their existing safety evaluation tool, policy, or procedures; train staff on the policy, procedures, and use of the tool; acquire software for digital mapping; test out their communication and video equipment; and overall, implement a sustainable school safety evaluation plan and processesthat enable them to complete evaluations on all their schools every two years as COMAR 14.40.06 requires. Each local education agency that applied received a minimum of $50,000 in grant funding to complete these tasks.
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