Kansas and Missouri Superintendents’ Perceptions of Crisis Preparedness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of superintendentsrelated to public-school crisis preparedness in the following seven areas: access andidentification, internal security, safety preparedness development, safety preparednessstudent activities, safety preparedness first responder activities, levels of preparedness,and influences on efforts towards safety preparedness. Survey data was collected fromsuperintendents of small, medium, and large public-school districts in Kansas andMissouri. Superintendents were asked to use a Likert rating scale to indicate levels ofimplementation, frequency, and preparedness with respect to the seven areas of crisispreparedness.Results revealed that superintendents do perceive that crisis preparednessactivities associated with access and identification and with internal security were presentin district buildings during the 2016-2017 school year. However, superintendents do notperceive that the five other areas of crisis preparedness were present in their districtbuildings during the 2016-2017 school year. The results of the analysis indicated thatsuperintendents’ perceptions of crisis preparedness activities were lower in small districtsthan they were in medium and large districts, and medium districts were lower than largedistricts in the following areas: access and identification, internal security, safetypreparedness development, safety preparedness first responder activities, and influenceson efforts towards safety preparedness. The results of the analysis also revealed thatsuperintendents’ perceptions of crisis preparedness student activities for small districtswere lower than the responses for medium and large districts. Responses for the levels ofpreparedness area revealed that there were no differences in superintendents’ perceptions when disaggregated by district size or state. The results of the analysis indicated thatsuperintendents’ perceptions of crisis preparedness activities associated with access andidentification, internal security, and levels of preparedness were present in their districtbuildings during the 2016-2017 school year were affected by state. Kansassuperintendents’ perceptions were lower than Missouri superintendents.Superintendents’ responses for the other crisis preparedness constructs were not affectedby state.Superintendents should consider the results of this study in public-school crisispreparedness planning. The current study provides a reference for superintendents’perceptions of the state of the seven areas of crisis preparedness examined in this study.The results may be helpful to superintendents when developing and implementingcomprehensive crisis plans and security management with related training for allstakeholders.