Audit Report on the Department of Education’s School Safety Plans for 10 Elementary Schools

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

This audit determined whether the Department of Education (DOE) has comprehensive safety plans in place at certain New York City elementary schools to ensure the safety and security of students and staff and whether safety and evacuation plan information is communicated to parents.

DOE schools in our sample had comprehensive safety plans in place. The DOE Office of School Safety and Planning (OSSP) tracks the completion and approval of school plans online through its computer system. Also, in compliance with applicable safety plan regulations, annual school plans specified the following:

• Policies and procedures for the safe evacuation of students, teachers, other school personnel, and visitors to the school in the event of an emergency, as well as evacuation routes and sites, including those for limited mobility students.
• Procedures to be followed under different emergency situations such as hostage, bomb threat, hazardous materials, shooting, kidnapping, and fire emergencies.
• Visitor control procedures and designation of emergency response teams.
• Procedures for addressing medical needs and emergency notification to persons in parental relation to a student.
• Procedures to account for all students after an emergency evacuation has been completed.

However, we found the following conditions:

• The 2003 and 2004 school safety plans that we reviewed did not meet DOE deadlines for completion and approval. The 2003 school safety plans for the 10 schools in our sample did not meet many of the DOE deadlines. Moreover, since the schools were unable to access the online system to update their 2003 plans until November 21, 2003, the 2004 school safety plans for the 10 schools in our sample had not been submitted to DOE Regional Safety Administrators (RSA) for initial review.
• At eight of our 10 sampled schools, parents were not notified of safety and evacuation plan information.

In addition, our visits to the 10 sampled schools disclosed various violations with parts of the school safety plans, as follows:

• Four of the 10 schools had one or two exit doors that were either locked from inside while school was in session or extremely difficult to open.
• Three of the schools had one or two exit doors that did not self-close.
• Two of the schools had hazardous chemicals stored in unlocked rooms that were accessible to students.
• Three schools did not have a school floor plan readily available in the principal’s office, library, or custodian’s office, as required in the school safety plan.
• One school did not specify exit locations on fire drill posters in 12 of its classrooms.
• Five of our sampled schools—as of the date of our field inspections—had not held the required monthly safety committee meetings.

Although not considered a school safety plan violation, three sampled schools had safety agents who did not have two-way radios or had radios that worked only intermittently.

In addition, although defibrillators are not prescribed for in school safety plans, Commissioner’s Regulation §136.4 of 2002 requires all schools to have them. All 10 sampled schools lacked defibrillators, in violation of the regulation.

In a letter dated October 31, 2003, (see Appendix) and in an e-mail dated November 10, 2003, we notified DOE about some of the above-mentioned conditions that we felt raised safety concerns for students and staff. In an e-mail dated November 13, 2003, DOE advised us that they took corrective action concerning these problems. During our exit conference, a representative of the DOE Division of School Facilities confirmed that corrective action was immediately taken to rectify the cited problems.

Based on the findings for our sample, we make 11 recommendations. Since our findings are school-specific and because there is variation in the management of individual schools, we decided that it was both unnecessary and inappropriate to expand our sample to permit meaningful statistical projection across all elementary schools. However, our recommendations may well be applicable to other schools. The most significant recommendations are that DOE should:

• Ensure that safety plans are completed or updated and approved by all parties in a timely manner, as required by the Chancellor’s Regulations.
• Ensure that parents are informed of important safety and evacuation plan information, including evacuation sites in case of an emergency.
• Ensure that custodians or their designees check all exit doors daily for compliance with applicable regulations.
• Instruct all school personnel, including custodians and teachers, to keep hazardous chemicals in locked storage and under proper ventilation.
• Ensure that every school has sufficient AEDs (automated external defibrillators) for use during emergencies and that proper training is provided to operators as required by State law.

The matters covered in this report were discussed with DOE officials during and at the conclusion of this audit. A preliminary draft report was sent to DOE officials on February 4, 2004, and was discussed at an exit conference held on March 9, 2004. On March 25, 2004, we submitted a draft report to DOE officials with a request for comments. On April 28, 2004, we received a written response from DOE officials.

In their response, DOE officials stated that they have already taken steps to implement or partially implement eight recommendations, disagreed with one recommendation, and did not address two recommendations.

DOE officials also stated, "It is necessary to clarify that notwithstanding the Comptroller’s finding that Safety Plan review deadlines were missed, all schools have in place at the beginning of each school year a certified Safety Plan that meets all security requirements. . . and are adequately prepared to respond to an emergency."

: The plans DOE referred to above are the previous year’s certified plans. Therefore, they still require prompt review for the current school year and must be updated for changes in personnel, new organizational arrangements, or other factors to ensure their applicability to current conditions to enable schools to adequately prepare for an emergency.