What to Do When There Is an Emergency at School!

About the Author

Peter Dolan is an assistant principal at the Linden STEAM Academy in Malden. Massachusetts.

The Linden is a K-8 school that has 900 students. The school also services developmentally delayed classes as well as the behavioral classes for the district. He serves on the executive team for NEMLEC STARS and a proud member Team Two of the STARS Task Force.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council's School Threat Assessment Response System is a regional team consisting of police, fire, and educators. Their main purpose is to respond to over 60 NEMLEC communities to assist with all types of school emergencies. Typical response calls are for bomb threats, sudden death of a staff member or student due to an illness/suicide/or accident, school shooting, and much more.

Peter has helped countless communities in developing school district policies, emergency response protocols, flip charts, crisis counseling response teams, drills, and evaluating safety procedures. He specializes in helping school systems that have outdated or a lack of emergency response procedures. He has had the privilege of being asked to speak on the topic of school safety to several educational and law enforcement audiences over the years. As one of the first to be trained in Massachusetts as an A.L.i.C.E. © Instructor, he believes that every school system should incorporate evacuation, barricading, and countering an intruder as a last resort to survival. Most recently, he served as a contributor to Governor Deval Patrick's "Task Force on School Safety and Security." This task force was responsible to develop recommendations to all Massachusetts communities in helping them to prevent, prepare, respond, and recover after an event. The report can be found at http://www.mass.gov/governor/docs/pdf-school-safety-task-force-final-report.pdf.

He is currently serving on the City of Malden Emergency Management Team.

To contact Peter, you can email him at otasalem@yahoo.com