The Benefits of Proactive Reunification Planning and Smart Tech
At any school, leaders need to be prepared for unexpected events, from minor disruptions that impact daily activities to severe incidents that threaten student safety. When an emergency necessitates school closure, reuniting students with their guardians becomes a critical, high-stakes operation that requires a meticulously planned reunification strategy.
We hosted a webinar with The “I Love U Guys” Foundation on effective school reunification strategies, covering how proactive planning, robust communication, and the intelligent application of technology are essential for successful reunification. In this blog, we cover some key takeaways from that webinar to help school leaders begin to master their reunification process.
Preparing for Reunification Drills
A top challenge identified by school leaders in the webinar poll was “running trainings and drills to prepare for reunification.” Unlike fire or lockdown drills, reunification drills often present logistical difficulties, especially when considering student involvement. However, as Pat Hamilton of The “I Love U Guys” Foundation highlighted, student involvement isn’t always necessary.
“For reunification, we don’t need to involve the students,” Hamilton explained. “We can have adults that play the role of students, adults that are playing the role of teacher and parent, and reunification team.”
This adult-only approach allows staff to identify gaps, introduce unexpected challenges, and refine the process without adding stress to students. Furthermore, conducting these drills in pre-identified reunification areas familiarizes teams with the actual locations and walking paths, optimizing the physical flow of the process.
The Critical Role of Proactive Communication
“Who owns the kids?”
It’s perhaps the most important question that needs to be answered for an effective reunification strategy. While the school is unequivocally responsible in that moment, maintaining control and public trust depends on clear, consistent communication.
Betsy Miller, an instructor explorer with the I Love U Guys Foundation, emphasized this: “Communication is the greatest challenge.”
Without accurate, timely information, parents will quickly turn to rumors on social media, frantic phone calls, and speculation. This misinformation can breed panic, undermine trust, and complicate reunification efforts. It’s why building a robust communication strategy begins long before a crisis hits.
Here are some key communication strategies to consider:
- Educate your community: Proactively inform parents about your general reunification process and explain their role:—having an ID ready, understanding the structured process, and being patient. This pre-crisis education manages expectations and reduces frustration during an actual event.
- Build allies: When parents understand and appreciate your safety measures, they become advocates, helping to spread accurate information and reinforcing the importance of following official channels. As Betsy shared, leveraging “captive audiences” at school events like sporting events or choir concerts to briefly discuss the reunification plan can yield powerful community support.
- Familiarize staff and parents with systems: Regular practice using your communication tools, even for routine drills, helps staff become proficient and desensitizes parents to receiving urgent messages.
Digital Accountability in Crisis
“Accountability” is a word that resonates with every school leader during an emergency. Knowing the precise whereabouts and status of every student is paramount for safety and successful reunification. Traditional paper-based systems, while functional, are slow, prone to error, and lack real-time visibility.
As Hamilton recounted, early reunification efforts could take hours, often resembling the “Simba method” – where staff would “lift that student up and you ask whose child is this.” Such methods amplify trauma and anxiety. The goal is to avoid creating “trauma on top of what might already be a traumatic experience.”
Modern software solutions for reunification offer a transformative improvement in accountability. This real-time, digital accountability allows schools to:
- Properly allocate resources: Knowing who is where, instantly and securely, allows for efficient deployment of resources.
- Maintain confidentiality: Information is shared securely among authorized personnel, preventing sensitive details from being broadcast over radios or to the general public.
- Streamline the transfer of custody: The right software facilitates the meticulous tracking of parents checking in and students being released, acting as a “permanent record” for legal guardianship transfer, a far more efficient and accurate method than paper logs.
This digital approach significantly speeds up the reunification process and provides crucial reassurance for teachers, knowing their students are accounted for, and for leaders, knowing they have a comprehensive, real-time picture of the entire student body.
Fostering First Responder Partnerships
Reunification is rarely a school-only event. It often involves multiple external agencies.
As Hamilton highlighted, “fire has responded to your school for a gas leak, and they’ve determined that there is an active gas leak…Fire part, they’ve done their job in that situation, and they’re gonna say, you need to evacuate, but they’re not gonna run your reunification for you.”
This underscores a critical truth: schools own the students, and thus, own the reunification process, even after the initial crisis response.
Building strong relationships with first responders—law enforcement, fire, EMT, and emergency management—is fundamental. Pat refers to the Standard Response Protocol (SRP) and Standard Reunification Method (SRM) from the I Love U Guys Foundation as tools to “get people into the room to talk.”
Here are some tips for cultivating collaboration with first responders:
- Invitations and incentives: Simply inviting first responders to planning sessions and drills can initiate crucial conversations.
- Shared understanding: These meetings foster mutual understanding of roles, responsibilities, and operational procedures during an emergency. First responders can offer invaluable insights on traffic flow, perimeter control, and overall logistics that schools might not consider daily.
- Mutual aid: Establishing mutual aid agreements with neighboring districts can create regional teams to support reunification efforts when a district’s resources are stretched thin.
The Power of Grace and Redundancy
No reunification will ever be perfect.
Hamilton, with over thirty real-world reunifications under his belt, candidly admitted, “I never had a perfect reunification. I had thirty successful reunifications, some more successful than others.”
This acceptance of imperfection, coupled with a commitment to continuous improvement, is a vital lesson.
Here are some key lessons and best practices:
- Don’t wing it: Have a clear plan. Whether it’s based on the free resources at iloveuguys.org or another framework, put in the effort to develop and practice it. “Winging it” leads to chaos and prolonged emotional distress.
- Give yourself grace: Go into the process knowing that not everything will go according to plan. Focus on the wins and learn from mistakes.
- Have backups: Be ready if something goes wrong. Have people cross-trained, be able to access resources from multiple locations, and create alternative methods for communication to share information.
Tech Tools to Master School Reunification
Singlewire Software offers multiple tools to help K-12 schools leverage the training provided by the I Love U Guys Foundation and master their reunification process. InformaCast is a mass notification system that allows schools to share information easily within their school and even alert outside agencies about crisis situations happening within their building. Visitor Aware is a visitor management tool that has rostering and reunification capabilities as well as safety drill tools to help school leaders conduct reunification drills, track the process, and assess execution after the drill is completed to address potential gaps. Having preconfigured tools in place helps minimize stress during a real event, enabling quick and effective communication to ensure a successful reunification process.
Watch the full “Planning Together: Overcoming K-12 Reunification Challenges” webinar to learn more.