OVIEDO, Fla. — The National Center for Integrated Emergency Response (NCIER) has released a free, self-paced online course on how schools and responders handle a violent attack on campus
The course, School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM) Foundations, launched Sept. 1. It consists of 13 video modules, most of them three to four minutes long, and NCIER says the full course takes under an hour. There are no prerequisites, and every participant earns a certificate. Districts and agencies can track completion at no cost.
NCIER says the course aims to fill a gap after lockdown. It walks through how responders work an incident, who commands when multiple agencies arrive, how a campus is cleared, and how every student and staff member is accounted for by name through reunification.
The training is meant for both sides of the response. For schools, that includes teachers, front office staff, bus drivers, school resource officers, superintendents, and board members. For responders, it includes law enforcement, fire, EMS, 911 dispatch, public information officers, and emergency management.
NCIER says the course is designed to work alongside the Standard Response Protocol and Standard Reunification Method from The “I Love U Guys” Foundation, adding a shared picture of how the full response unfolds around those protocols.
“Not having a plan and training on it costs lives when seconds count,” said Bill Godfrey, CEO of C3 Pathways and its services division, NCIER.
SSAVEIM Foundations is the online knowledge base for NCIER’s in-person SSAVEIM course, which includes hands-on scenarios and was most recently delivered to Orange County Public Schools and Central Florida responders ahead of this school year. NCIER, based in Oviedo, Florida, is the services division of C3 Pathways, Inc. SSAVEIM is built on the Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist, developed by C3 Pathways and endorsed by the National Tactical Officers Association as a national standard for managing active shooter events.
The course is available at ncier.org/ssaveim/foundations.
