The strength of your plan’s communications and media strategies will help ensure everyone has the most up-to-date information. Big-picture communications and media strategies to include in the plan are:
Determine who and how the school or district will provide information during a crisis about:
- What happened?
- Who is in charge?
- Has the situation been contained? How?
- Are the victims being helped?
- Why did this happen?
- Did you have forewarning?
Identify tools used to communicate with internal and external audiences:
- An emergency Web site, linked to the district homepage, with regular updates and links to resources
- An email listserv to stakeholders who must be contacted regularly, such as staff, media and elected officials
- Translation services
- Templates
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- Electronic message templates at school and district offices to provide the latest information.
- A daily fact sheet template. Click here to download a sample.
- Template letters or emails to parents at affected school and other schools in district. Click here to download a sample.
- Frequently asked questions and answers that can be distributed to media and put on the crisis Web site. Click here to download a sample.
Identify tactics for answering media questions, sharing accurate and up-to-the-minute information and developing positive working relationships with the media:
- Know who to contact and how to reach all local media. Think about how your community gets its news. For example, do people rely on radio stations? Is there a local news station?
- Develop template news releases and advisories that can be quickly filled in and updated with information.
- Follow all district policies and state laws when releasing information to the media.
- Identify an experienced spokesperson to field media questions and requests.
- Craft key messages about school safety and talking points specific to the emergency or crisis. Click here for sample association media messages. Click here for school safety statistics.
- Identify who will provide guidance to teachers on media interviews.
- Establish policies regarding media presence on school grounds and in buildings. Click here for protocols.
- Manage media coverage of benchmark dates. Click here for media tips.
- Create a letter or email that encourages media responsibility. Click here to download a sample.