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Families trust schools to keep their children safe during the day. While themajority of schools do remain safe thanks to the efforts of millions of educators acrossAmerica, the unfortunate reality is that school districts throughout the country may betouched either directly or indirectly by a major crisis of some kind at any time.The primary purpose of this study was to explore the status of crisis managementin schools as perceived by K-8 school administrators in the state of Kansas. Additionally,the purpose of this study was to analyze the readiness level of administrators and schoolsto respond to major crisis situations and identify to what extent collaboration is occurringbetween first responders and school administrators. Furthermore, the purpose of thisstudy was to explore training opportunities that have been made available toadministrators, and analyze to what extent administrators face barriers in theimplementation of crisis preparedness plans.A quantitative research design with descriptive analysis using survey methodswas utilized for this study. Additionally, a factorial analysis of variance was conductedto address to what extent administrators differ in school-wide crisis preparednessaccording to demographic variables. The Crisis Preparedness Survey was administeredthrough a web-based questionnaire to gauge the perceptions of K-8 administrators ontheir level of preparedness for a school crisis situation.Findings from the study indicated that the majority (70.7%) of K-8 administratorsin Kansas perceive they are prepared for a crisis and have benefited from the crisispreparedness training they have received, but there is a lack of consistency amongadministrators as to the type of training that has been received or should be offered. K-8 administrators in Kansas are committed to crisis preparedness in schools, but 94%perceive they face significant barriers in the implementation of their plans, such as time,money, practice, staff reluctance, and building design. |
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