By Sukainah Abid-Kons, contributor
For the first time, Harrisonburg City Public Schools are using a uniform Emergency Action Plan. On paper, the change is relatively small, but school leaders say the effects will lead to swifter and more organized responses to emergencies.
An Emergency Action Plan, or EAP for short, is designed to help schools navigate a variety of situations by minimizing risk, coordinating timely responses, and facilitating communication among school employees and emergency services, as well as parents and guardians.
The city-wide EAP started this school year, after more than a dozen planning meetings and countless hours of work.
Kris Vass, the school district’s coordinator of operations, helped create the most recent iteration of the EAP. He said the document represents a new version of plans that have been in place for years — the major difference is how it’s organized. Previously, EAPs had been created school by school, which – while tailored for each location – started to lead to some significant differences in how situations were handled.
“They were similar, but very different,” Vass said. While each school’s plan essentially covered the same scenarios in similar ways, each was worded differently.
Vass says that the idea to create one comprehensive plan for all the city schools started in late 2023 and early 2024. Smithland Elementary and Skyline Middle School had already discussed creating one campus-wide plan, which also contributed to the idea of crafting a district-wide approach.
The plan was made in cooperation with the Harrisonburg Police and Fire Departments, who recommended that a uniform plan be created to optimize their response, and, in turn, better ensure the safety of the students. That way, in any given scenario, emergency responders could know what the foundations of their response should be, instead of navigating a different scenario for each school.
Then, in April 2024, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DJCS) released a new template for schools to use for their EAPs.
“Our schools have always had an emergency plan,” Vass said. “This is just an evolution of the plan.”
Vass says the effort — which was the result of a lot of work from himself, Sean Printz, and Peter Norman of Bluestone Elementary, along with Bluestone Staff — was “an effort to be proactive more than anything as opposed to reactive.”
It has already been tested this fall at Keister Elementary, which has had an issue with a smell of natural gas in the school.
Keister has had to evacuate three times due to the reported smell of gas. Each time, the Fire Department, which has a station just across Maryland Avenue from the school, responded and completed a “thorough inspection,” according to a letter sent out to Keister families by the school.
The most recent evacuation came on Sept. 12. “No leaks or concerns were identified” during the inspection, the letter said.
A swift response meant that students could return to the building once everything was cleared, meaning less interruption to class time.
Vass said maintenance crews are checking Keister “multiple times a day” to monitor the situation.
Overall, Vass said the EAP will continue to evolve — especially as schools’ needs change.
“It’s a living document, it’s ongoing,” he said. “It will continue evolving.”
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