NIMS Activity 23: Institutionalize the Incident Command System

All schools and institutions of higher education (IHEs) institutionalize the Incident Command System (ICS) for managing all emergency incidents, exercises, and preplanned (recurring/special) events in accordance with ICS organizational structures, doctrine, and procedures, as defined in NIMS.

COMMAND AND MANAGEMENT

Activity 23: Institutionalize the Incident Command System (ICS) for managing all emergency incidents and pre-planned school and campus events.

All schools and institutions of higher education (IHEs) institutionalize the Incident Command System (ICS) for managing all emergency incidents, exercises, and preplanned (recurring/special) events in accordance with ICS organizational structures, doctrine, and procedures, as defined in NIMS.

Association to NIMS

The Command and Management component of NIMS creates the ICS that facilitates incident response activities across five major functional areas: Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics, and Finance/ Administration. The school's, district's, or IHE's emergency management plan(s) detail the use of ICS, its members, their roles and responsibilities, incident action planning activities, and a common communication plan. The established processes and protocols put forth by the ICS must be supported by ongoing training opportunities, collaborative functional exercises, and updates to the plan based on lessons learned.

ICS is scalable and flexible and uses a standardized approach. This approach makes it adaptable to the complexities and demands of a wide variety of education-related incidents. Additionally, the standardized approach facilitates a joint operations response among schools and their emergency management partners including:

• Fire personnel and law enforcement;
• Hospitals and emergency service personnel;
• Public and mental health officials;
• Local government and community representatives;
• Media; etc.

When schools and their community response partners institutionalize the ICS, they are better able to implement an effective and coordinated response and hasten the recovery process. Use of ICS serves as the bridge uniting the school response teams to the community first response team partners. The strength of the system is reliant on the standardized approach.

NIMS Implementation Guidance

ICS was designed to create one, standardized, on-scene, all-hazard emergency management approach and operating structure to be used by all communities (e.g., school and campus personnel, local government officials, community response personnel.) The capacity of NIMS and ICS to support schools is reliant upon strong partnerships that include ongoing communication, coordination, and collaboration among school officials, local government officials, and community response partners (public and private).

ICS roles and responsibilities should be developed, practiced, and enhanced as a team. Each member of the school, campus or LEA emergency management team, should understand which roles on the ICS structure they are responsible for completing before, during, and after an emergency. In addition, school officials should contact representatives from related agencies and offices in order to ensure appropriate coordination and planning amongst team members from the campus and the community. Furthermore, school and campus leaders should provide the same guidance to auxiliary schools, satellite campuses, and subsidiary schools.

Because the ICS structure is comprehensive yet flexible - able to grow and shrink - it is a practical, cost-effective management tool that is equally appropriate for organizing large-scale, school-hosted events such as athletic events, ceremonies, and dances. These realistic scenarios offer opportunities for practice and evaluation.

Teams should lead debriefing meetings, draft after-action reports, and provide guidance for changes and updates to the plan. Whenever possible and appropriate, emergency management teams should seek feedback from participants such as staff, faculty, students, and parents. The data collected should be analyzed and directly linked to the effectiveness of the plan. Subsequently, these lessons learned become the basis for modifications and strengthening the plan. Institutionalizing the ICS and applying its functions to more common events can be a powerful tool for training, developing positive relationships with partners, and evaluating established plans.

Sample activities demonstrating that schools and IHEs are institutionalizing of ICS include:

• Determining, designating, and documenting in advance key personnel and their roles and responsibilities within ICS, including the chain of command;
• Determining, designating, and documenting back-ups to personnel with leadership positions within ICS;
• Using ICS to manage all related activities before, during, and after school and campus events to provide for the safety and well-being of attendees; and
• Providing joint training opportunities to support ICS.