A useful part of a school’s crisis planning is to perform regular tabletop exercises. These are a low-stress way for crisis response teams to preview different emergency scenarios.
At Fine Point Communications, we facilitate tabletops for schools, and in our experience, every school benefits greatly from them. The exercise identifies gaps in a crisis plan, including blind spots and needed personnel. And the practice of relying on one another always prepares a team better for whatever might be around the corner.
The process of arranging an exercise is not difficult. Each tabletop needs only a few essential elements:
- A scenario
- A time limit
- A facilitator to direct the exercise
- An after-exercise report
In addition, a note-taker is a useful addition. That frees the facilitator to guide the group’s conversation and perhaps to introduce a surprise or two along the way. (More on this in a bit.)
Scenario
An appropriate tabletop scenario is any urgent situation that emerges without warning. It could be something that your school has already experienced, one where you would like to improve the response. It could be a situation that you’ve read about happening elsewhere. Or it could be a worry that has you wondering how the school would respond.
For your first few tabletops, keep the scenario straightforward, such as a tornado warning or a power outage. And keep it simple: Summarize the situation in only one brief sentence.
Instinct may draw you toward the topics of greatest need or concern — an active-shooter situation, for instance. But think of those as senior-level exercises; you’re starting at the first-year level. Some group familiarity with the process is necessary before taking on deeply complex and emotionally challenging issues.
Here are a few more example scenarios:
- A server crashes, taking down online access and potentially losing data
- An extraordinary number of teachers call in sick on one day
- A school bus carrying students breaks down; no one is injured
Time limit
We recommend that tabletop exercises run 10 to 15 minutes. The group needs some time to absorb the scenario, propose responses and come to decisions, but not so much time that people lose their focus and sense of urgency.
Facilitator
This could be the senior official in the meeting or an outside person brought in for the task. Yet another approach is to rotate the role, which provides more people with the opportunity to lead the exercise. You’ll likely find that new points of view can emerge.
The facilitator should keep an eye on time but also listen actively to the conversation, drawing attention to areas that the group might be overlooking.
After the group has completed a few tabletop exercises, facilitators might consider throwing a curveball into their scenario, such as making certain personnel unavailable (think: out of town with donors), or even during the discussion — like announcing that phone lines have gone down or certain doors or hallways are suddenly inaccessible.
Takeaways/after-exercise work
Before concluding the exercise, the facilitator should ask the group to name awareness and/or lessons it drew, including any specific areas for immediate or longer-term follow-up.
The scribe will capture these, after which the facilitator should use the notes to prepare the first draft of an after-exercise report. Other group members should weigh in on the report, the final version of which would ideally inform new policies or checklists that address the takeaways.
To talk further about tabletop exercises or get assistance in bringing the process to your school, drop us a line at Fine Point Communications.
This post is adapted from the November 2023 issue of Refill, a newsletter published by Fine Point Communications.
