Reopening schools in a pandemic. Were they ready?

The pandemic has led to some unexpected worlds.   I am not an epidemiologist and I am not a formal educator, so you can imagine how odd it was over this summer to find myself helping to formulate a safe reopening strategy for schools in my state.  The world of education advocacy can be a strange and surprising one to say the least.  

It was an education advocacy non-profit called "Virginia Public Education Partners" (VPEP) that asked for my help.   They had no shortage of skilled teachers and administrators in their ranks, but they wanted to look at the challenge from a practical operational perspective.   They wanted to go beyond a "wish list" and approach State and County leaders with an actionable plan that directed efforts to achievable goals.   

They wanted a "Readiness Plan" where "ready" meant a safe and clean learning environment for public schools.  

Where then do you start when all your prior experience has been around IT systems and Facilities?  The first thing I did is to check with the experts.  The CDC had already produced a planning tool  for K-12 readiness. This checklist gave me a goalpost to work towards.  Not to be too cliché, but I was able to start with the end in mind.   

With our destination in mind, I would need to take account of where we are.  Luckily, I was a bit more aware of this.   Since my kids started school I had been a frequent volunteer and been involved in a number of issues that have arisen over the years.    I had also made friends in the building facility department for my county which gave me a "behind the curtain" view of the situation.  I have found over the years that the best information does not always come from an organization's leadership, rather it comes from those working through the day to day tasks to keep things running.    

Through these contacts, asking questions and reading a couple years of "superintendent" reports I was able to put together something resembling what, If I were working for a client, I would have called an "Initial readiness assessment" which told me where the gaps were between current state and what our desired state would be as defined by those CDC guidelines.  The gulf, was not small.  

There were gaps in sanitation, ventilation, class room layout, emergency procedures, critical staffing, and maintenance.  In the end, given the scope and risk we had identified, our recommendation was that the School division should focus it's 2020 efforts on reinforcing it's virtual learning option in alignment with the CDC's "Lowest Risk" option.   We, however understood that the political and economic reality of the time meant that there would be a return to in person education.   

Assuming that Virginia would move forward on a reopening, we laid out our recommendations by category.  

Of course we recommended that masks be required to all students and that hand sanitizer and hand washing supplies, but we wanted to go deeper into that. 

For Sanitation we recommended enhancements to staffing and accountability.   Initial assessment already showed that in many cases the available custodial staff was not able to keep up with the cleaning duties of a pre-pandemic world.   To meet CDC guidelines, Custodial staff would need to do frequent whole school cleanings every week.  Augmenting that staff, with additional FTEs or outsourced resources was absolutely called for.  We also recommended "accountability gates" be built into the sanitation process.   Each task would be signed off on every time by a resource who would be held responsible for the results of the work done.  

Staffing was another concern.  Under pre-pandemic rules, sick time was limited and usage was frowned upon.  This would lead to many school employees "powering through" colds and flu.  If that staff member is powering through the coronavirus there was a significant risk of spreading infections.  We recommended much greater flexibility in sick-leave policy.   We also recommended a nurse in every school and a dedicated position focused on COVID-19 mitigation management, empowered to make decisions up to and including sending the entire school back to virtual based on real world conditions.

We recognized that there was an element in the population that was already non-compliant with mitigation strategies.  Student's coming from these homes may not understand how or why to stay safe from potential infection, so we recommended that class time be spent demonstrating proper precautions and explaining their importance.       We also recognized that in the special education field there may be a need for additional attention, training and precautions as staff may encounter a more hands-on teaching experience or may need to deal with students who are unable to comply  with standard measures. 

The 2020 Coronavirus pandemic was complicated by the fact that asymptomatic carriers could spread the virus while unaware that they were sick.  We still felt that filtering out people with active symptoms would reduce our risk exposure, so we asked that temperature and symptom screenings be conducted daily.  

​CDC and WHO research suggested that there is a lower risk of contamination outdoors  so we asked schools to think outside the box (or building) and utilize outdoor space as much as possible.   Many schools have large campuses with sport fields, wooded space, and tiered seating that could be useful in a classroom environment.  

​Class size, scheduling and layout should promote social distancing. So we made recommendations regarding classroom layout, class size and staggered virtual/in-person days to reduce same day head count.  

One item took me by surprise.  It is a sign of our times that, in addition to fire-drills, and tornado drills, kids these days also have "lockdown" drills where they prepare for active shooters by hiding in a locked classroom.    Each of these drills presented unique issues.    Fire drills and tornado drills would put so many students in the halls at the same time that it wouldn't be possible to keep distance.   Shooter drills would require students to huddle together in unseen corners.  With the exception of a limited schedule of fire drills, other drilling would have to be put on hold until the crisis was over. 

​The early months of the crisis had constrained the national supply chain; modifications to standing policy had to be made to account for availability. We asked that exclusive contracts with vendors be paused so that the schools were free to collect supplies anywhere they were available.    This was an important lesson I learned early on in the Pandemic after I had to find several thousand headsets for employees being sent home while every other business in the country was doing the same.   

The last piece of the puzzle, is to answer what to do when every precaution you made fails.  How do you react to a detected case in the school?   We asked that a clear and detailed positive exposure plan, including contact tracing and notification strategies be published for transparency and in place before schools reopened.  

The VPEP Proposal was submitted to Virginia leadership and published as an open letter in July.    I spoke to the National Education Association about this work in August.  I am proud of the work I did on that effort though I know the cost of some of our recommendations are a bitter pill to swallow.   In August and September, Virginia counties started to open, in many cases with mitigation strategies in place that match or resemble those we produced.   There is so much more that should be done and I have not been shy about making my opinion known to State and County leadership.  

Perhaps as new priorities are set at the Federal, State, and Local levels, our work can help inform a reassessment of our strategies and guide us through our lessons learned.