Crisis. This word brings to mind different images for different people. Often people imagine natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornados. In the past schools were often considered safe havens from the dangers and threats of the outside world. In recent years, however, reports of crises in schools have grown rapidly. Examples of crises periodically experienced in schools include student and faculty deaths, acts of violence, threats of violence, transportation accidents, weapons on school grounds, severe weather, fire, hostage situations, and bomb threats. In today's violent world there is an increasing challenge to provide a safe learning environment for school aged children as well as educators. In recent years this challenge has become more difficult for school officials and a crisis can strike the well prepared as well as the ill-prepared school system. The major difference is that a well-prepared school system has a much higher probability of minimizing the loss associated with a crisis. Failing to plan for a crisis is planning to fail. Like a chain, a crisis management plan is only as strong as its weakest link. Effective crisis management plans have several key components such as organized crisis response teams, crisis response training, and practice crisis drills. Only a comprehensive approach to school safety can create the level of safety needed, therefore gaps in a crisis management plan must be eliminated by using such strategies as Incident reporting and tracking, tactical site surveys, school safety plan, emergency operations plan, staff development efforts (training), design of facilities, and testing of prevention concepts and emergency operations plans (drills). There are several prevention strategies that school systems can incorporate into their crisis management plan. These preventive strategies often involve incorporating curriculum topics such as substance abuse, violence prevention and conflict resolution into the school's curriculum to try and decrease the frequency of crises. There is a delicate balance between safety and a free learning environment and using a comprehensive approach to school safety this balance is attainable. Planning, preparing, and practicing for events before they occur will help minimize the associated losses. Planning after the crisis is too late. The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of preparedness of school systems by examining their crisis management planning activities. The descriptive data provided in this study is necessary to determine the current state of school system crisis preparedness and to determine the necessary steps for improvement. Keyword(s): administration/mgmt, violence/prevention, youth-at-risk