House rallies for continued coordination on school safety

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Wednesday released a report entitled “Emergency Management: Improved Federal Coordination Could Better Assist K-12 Schools Prepare for Emergencies.”

The report was jointly requested by U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Dan Donovan (R-NY), Susan Brooks (R-IN) and Donald Payne, Jr. (D-NJ).

“The ultimate goal is to better protect our children by identifying inefficiencies and security gaps in emergency preparedness plans at schools across our nation,” McCaul said. “We must work together to support state and local efforts to prevent, protect, mitigate, respond to, and recover from a potential emergency. The better coordinated security planning efforts are, the better protected our children will be.”

Although many school distracts have access to federal resources to support emergency preparedness, the GAO report found that many lack proper strategic coordination or were generally unaware of the resources that are available to them.

The report also found that 96 percent of school districts have conducted emergency drills within the last three years and 92 percent of school districts recently updated their emergency operations plans.

In FY 2014, 18 states provided state homeland security grant program funds to school districts and schools for emergency planning activities that ranged from $25,000 to $1.2 million.