10 Ways to Plan for Emergencies in a Special Education Classroom

On October 15, a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, took the lives of three young students and Megan Lambert, a 25-year-old special education teacher. It was Megan’s first year with a classroom of her own. Another teacher and a 7-year-old student were critically injured. Police say the attack took place in a special education classroom, and special educators everywhere have been holding our own students a little closer ever since.

The people who loved Megan remember her as a natural leader who brought cheerfulness and patience to everything she did. One friend said being loved by her was “like soaking in the sun on a chilly day.”

I want to say something honestly before anything else: nothing in this post could have stopped what happened in Bend. No checklist, no training, and no plan can promise that a tragedy like this will never happen. And so many of us have never been given much training for emergencies with students who use wheelchairs, communicate without words, need medication on a schedule, or would struggle to stay quiet during a lockdown. If you’ve ever stood in your classroom during a drill and thought, “I don’t actually know how I’d get everyone out,” you are not alone, and it is not a failure on your part.

What we can do is prepare. Preparing won’t take the fear away, but it can give you and your students more of what matters in the moment: a plan, the right supplies, and people who know their roles. Here are ten strategies that might help support you if the unthinkable ever happens.

If you found me through my video, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

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By the Numbers

7.5 million public school students were served under IDEA in 2022–23, about 15% of all public school students. (NCES)
96% of public schools had a written plan for an active shooter in 2021–22, and 96% held a lockdown drill. (NCES)
1 of 91 planning elements in New Jersey’s school-safety guidance addressed students with disabilities, according to a 2019 report. (NJ Council on Developmental Disabilities)
Only 20% of people with disabilities in a UN survey of nearly 6,000 people said they could evacuate immediately without difficulty in a sudden disaster, and 71% had no personal preparedness plan. (UN, 2013)

Most schools have emergency plans. The real question is whether those plans were written with our students in mind.

A quick note: these ideas are meant to start conversations with your team. They don’t replace your district’s emergency procedures or the guidance of your administrators and local first responders. Always follow your school’s protocols.

Free Emergency Planning Kit

I made an editable kit to go with this post, so you don’t have to start from scratch. It includes a meeting facilitator guide, individualized emergency plans, a classroom one-pager, a communication board with visual cards, a family letter, and more. Edit it in Canva or PowerPoint.

Get the Free Kit

1. Hold a Meeting Where Emergencies Are the Only Topic

I know how full your team’s plate is. IEPs, schedules, staffing, behavior plans… there is never enough time. But emergency protocol deserves its own meeting, not the last five minutes of another one. First meet with your classroom team, then meet with outside team members. Make it a priority.

Meeting #1: Your Classroom Team

Start with the adults who work directly with your students: your paraeducators, classroom staff, and job coaches. You know your students best, so your classroom team should be the ones creating the plan. Plan for about 90 minutes, and bring your class roster, IEPs and safety plans, and a building map.

Walk through each emergency. Talk through what a lockdown, evacuation, shelter-in-place, or medical emergency would realistically look like in your classroom.
Think about each student. Who needs help to evacuate? Who might run, freeze, or struggle to stay quiet? Who needs visuals or AAC?
Come up with solutions, not just concerns. For every challenge, decide what your team will actually do, and write down what you still need to figure out.
Assign roles and backups. Who grabs the go-bag, takes attendance, supports specific students, and calls the office? Make sure the plan still works when someone is absent.
Put it on paper. Your plan doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should walk away with a draft, not just a list of worries.

Want help leading this meeting? The facilitator guide in my free Emergency Planning Kit walks your team through all five steps, with suggested times and fill-in charts.

Meeting #2: Share Your Plan and Ask for Feedback

Next, meet with your building administrator or school safety team, plus your nurse, therapists, or other specialists as needed. The goal isn’t for someone else to write your plan. It’s to share what your team built and make sure it works with your school’s procedures.

Walk through your plan and the roles you’ve assigned.
Ask how alerts reach your room, where evacuation equipment is kept, and how students with high needs will be supported at reunification.
Request the equipment, training, or support your team needs.
Update your plan with their feedback, and share the final version with every adult who has a role.

The kit also includes building team meeting notes with questions to ask and a place to track who’s following up.

Your classroom team develops the plan. Administration helps review, coordinate, and support it. Together, you make sure your students aren’t an afterthought when it comes to emergency preparedness.

2. Write an Individual Emergency Plan for Every Student With High Needs

A school-wide plan tells everyone to evacuate. An individual plan tells you how your student who uses a power wheelchair gets down the stairs, or how your student who elopes stays with an adult.

Each plan can cover: how the student moves, how they communicate, medical needs and medications, sensory needs and what helps them calm, their safe adults, the equipment that must go with them, and how to reach their family. The individualized emergency plan template in my free kit has a section for each of these.

The REMS Center recommends writing individualized emergency procedures into the student’s IEP and reviewing them at IEP meetings. The 2019 New Jersey report made the same recommendation: use each student’s IEP to decide what safe evacuation looks like and who should help. And bring families in. They know their child best.

Helpful tool: for students with complex medical needs, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Emergency Physicians created a downloadable Emergency Information Form that summarizes a child’s medical history for emergency care. With the family’s permission, a copy can live in the student’s go-bag.

3. Prep Go-Bags, and Make Sure the Essentials Never Leave the Student

Every classroom should have an emergency go-bag. For students with high needs, go one step further: keep a few backpacks of backup supplies, and make sure anything a student absolutely cannot go without travels with them everywhere: to lunch, PE, music, assemblies, therapy, and the bathroom.

“Never leave the room without it” items might include: wheelchairs and mobility equipment, feeding tube supplies, rescue and seizure medications, inhalers, epinephrine, diabetes supplies, toileting supplies, AAC devices and chargers, glasses, and hearing aids. Work with your school nurse on how medications are stored and carried, since every district has its own rules.

Backup bag checklist:

A copy of each student’s emergency plan and family contacts
A current photo of each student and a printed class roster (the free kit has a photo roster template)
Water and snacks that fit each student’s diet
Briefs, wipes, gloves, and a change of clothes
Noise-canceling headphones, comfort items, and fidgets
Suckers keep their mouth occupied
Visual cards for directions like “quiet,” “wait,” and “stay with me”
A flashlight, a whistle, and a phone power bank

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) suggests keeping multiple kits in different parts of the building. Maybe one by your door, one in the cafeteria or common area, and one anywhere else your students spend time. Then check them every few months: swap expired snacks, and update photos and phone numbers.

4. Assign People, Not Just Places

Most plans tell us where to go. Our students also need to know who is with them. Give every student with high needs an adult they are comfortable with and a backup adult for evacuations and lockdowns. If a student needs two adults for a transfer, plan for both.

Then plan for the days things don’t go as scheduled: subs, absent paras, specials, and assemblies. Keep a one-page emergency card in your sub folder and by the door that says who needs help, what kind of help, and where to go.

5. Plan for Mobility Before You Need It

Think about students who use wheelchairs or walkers, students who can’t manage stairs, and students who may run, drop to the floor, freeze, or refuse to move when they’re scared.

Consider having a spare wheelchair or transport chair available. If a student drops to the ground, freezes, or becomes unable to walk during an emergency, could a wheelchair help? Identify which students might benefit and where the chair would be stored.. Practice, see if this would work in an emergency.
Decide who is responsible for pushing wheelchairs. Assign specific staff members to students who need assistance, and what other students they could be in charge of while pushing. Think about who will open doors or move obstacles while the adult pushes.
Have a plan for students who elope or refuse to move. Who responds? Who stays with the rest of the class? What strategies have worked for that student in the past? Don’t wait until an emergency to figure this out.
Actually walk your evacuation routes. Look for narrow hallways, heavy doors, stairs, uneven surfaces, and anything that could make moving students difficult. Identify an accessible backup route.
Practice with your classroom team. If a student needs assistance transferring or using evacuation equipment, make sure the adults have appropriate training and know how to do it safely.
Consider your classroom location. If your classroom is upstairs or far from an accessible exit, ask whether moving to a more accessible location is possible.
Think about what happens AFTER you exit. Is your designated meeting area accessible? Can students using wheelchairs reach it? Is there a safe, accessible alternate location?

The goal is to eliminate as many barriers as possible BEFORE an emergency happens. Your team should know who is helping whom, what equipment is needed, and exactly how students will get to safety. Any transfers, physical assistance, or evacuation equipment use should follow individualized safety procedures and be carried out by appropriately trained staff.

6. Make Lockdowns Possible for Students Who Can’t Stay Quiet or Still

Most lockdown procedures assume students can sit silently for a long time. For many of our students, that isn’t realistic, and that’s okay. Plan for it instead of hoping for the best.

Keep a lockdown kit with headphones, comfort items, snacks, and fidgets where you can grab it fast.
Have calming tools, like a weighted blanket, ready to go.
Use visual cards so you can give directions without talking.
Know exactly what calms each student (it should be in their plan), and make sure every adult in the room knows too.

And please, never punish a student for how their body reacts to fear. Support comes first.

7. Practice in a Way That Builds Skills, Not Fear

Almost every school runs lockdown drills. But a drill done once, loudly, and with no preparation can be terrifying for our students. YES, our students NEED more practice than general education students… Here are some tips for practicing with students with disabilities:

Teaching drills with social stories and picture guides, then practicing in the real locations.
Practicing more often than required, in different places: hallways, bathrooms, and the cafeteria.
Starting small. A student might first wait outside with an adult, then watch classmates evacuate, then evacuate with the class.
Playing alarm sounds at a low volume and slowly turning it up.
Teaching words like “emergency” ahead of time.

Guidance from NASP, the National Association of School Resource Officers, and Safe and Sound Schools also recommends starting with simple discussion-based exercises, telling families and staff about drills ahead of time, considering each student’s needs and past trauma, and offering mental health support afterward. After any drill, give students time for questions. Instead of promising them they’ll always be safe, remind them of everything the adults do to keep them safe. To give families a heads-up, you can send home the editable family letter from my free kit.

8. Give Every Student a Way to Communicate in an Emergency

Add emergency words like “help,” “hurt,” “scared,” and “bathroom” to AAC device and core boards, practice using them.
Keep a laminated emergency communication card on a lanyard or in the go-bag. The free kit includes an emergency communication board and 12 visual direction cards for staff.
Teach students to recognize helpers by their uniforms (police, firefighters, paramedics, and nurses), and practice following directions from adults they don’t know.
Make sure students who are deaf or hard of hearing get alerts they can see, and that announcements reach every space your students use, including bathrooms.
Check that your classroom has a working phone or radio, and that every adult knows your school’s emergency codes.

9. Help First Responders Know Your Students Before an Emergency

Police, firefighters, and paramedics can’t plan for a student they don’t know is there. In its tips for students with autism, NASP recommends inviting first responders to take part in drills so they know where students may be and how they might respond. Even a short classroom visit helps your students get comfortable with helpers in uniform.

Work with your administrators so the front office and your district’s safety team know where students with high needs are throughout the day. During an actual emergency, FERPA’s health or safety exception lets schools share the information needed to protect students. For anything shared ahead of time, follow your district’s policies and get family consent where it’s needed.

10. Plan for Reunification and the Hours After

An emergency doesn’t end when the building is cleared. In the CDC study, only about 68% of districts required family reunification procedures in their crisis plans, and only about 69% required mental health services afterward.

Plan for students who can’t say their name or a parent’s phone number. Keep photos in the go-bag, and with the family’s OK, put an ID card in their backpack or on a lanyard.
Know who is allowed to pick up each student.
Reunification sites are loud and crowded. Plan a calmer space, and keep assigned adults with their students until they’re with family.
Afterward, ask for mental health support for your students and your staff. Bring back familiar routines, and use a social story to help students understand what happened.

Where to Start This Week

This list can feel like a lot. You don’t have to do it all at once. Start here:

Put an emergency-only meeting on your team’s calendar, and download the free Emergency Planning Kit to guide it.
Go through your students, write down their “never leave without it” items, and start their go-bag.
Walk your evacuation route as if you were pushing a wheelchair, and notice what would slow you down.

None of this is about living in fear. It’s about loving our students enough to plan for them, the way Megan so clearly loved hers. Her family has created a foundation in her name to support education, mental health, services for children with special needs, and Oregon schools. Please hold Megan, the students who were lost, and the entire Silver Rail community in your hearts.

If this news has been heavy for you, you don’t have to carry it alone. The Disaster Distress Helpline is available at 1-800-985-5990, and if you’re in crisis, you can call or text 988.

I’d love to keep this conversation going. What has your team done to prepare? Come share in my Facebook group for high school SPED teachers, and join the list below for more strategies like these.