Principle 1: Leadership & Culture

Promote a leadership approach and culture around health that build trust between leaders and the school community, facilitate agile data-driven decisions, take a balanced view of health / education risks, and emphasize resilience.

1.1 Develop a plan for clear communication with families, staff, and the community

Likely Implementation Level DISTRICT

Status

Priority Level

NOTE: Update your school's or district's status and priority level in your progress tracker (link at the bottom of the homepage).

Key Recommendations for Consideration

  • Establish and share your principles and plans for communication and stick to them.

  • Develop clear, transparent, and streamlined messages for families, staff, and the community. Train staff on these messages.

  • Use a variety of communication methods to engage with students, families, and staff. Determine and use consistent modes of communication (mail, email, text, virtual meetings) and employ a predictable and set cadence of communication.

  • Use a standard format and set of content for communications (e.g. latest data, changes or updates to public health guidelines, changes or updates to education plans, a win or positive spotlight).

  • Establish who will be involved in communication and messaging.

  • Identify a point person to answer COVID-19 and school reopening questions.

  • Provide a regular method for families to send questions, ask questions, and share concerns; offer multiple options to accommodate schedules.

  • Develop or adopt protocols for risk communication when a student, staff, or close contact of students and staff tests positive for COVID-19.

  • Communicate in families’ preferred/home languages.

Starting Point Tools

Considerations and Questions for Team Decision-Making and Reflection

  • What will our communication principles be? How will we share them transparently?

  • What are the multiple modes of communication (mail, email, text, virtual meetings) and frequency of communication we will aim for?

  • Who will be involved in communication and messaging? Who are the decision-makers and point people?

  • How will we monitor communications success?

  • How will we address issues of equity for families and students without access to primary channels or with whom we lost contact at the end of the 2019-20 school year?

Other Resources

Country/District Examples

Ideas

  • Consider a dashboard or standard display on the school website so parents can check it as needed.

  • Set a consistent cadence for messaging, using multiple channels such as social media (e.g. morning announcements on Facebook Live or Zoom), email, mail, phone, and text messaging. The schedule could include:

    • weekly communications using a standard form, for example: latest data, changes or updates to public health guidelines, changes or updates to education plans, a win or positive spotlight.

    • a weekly video conference meeting with superintendents and principals.

    • virtual office hours for staff to debrief, unload, and share ideas.

  • Create a list of your existing communications tools and “audit” them to assess capability for ad hoc and scheduled messages that will reach all of your community members. Consider additional tools to fill gaps; examples of possible tools include Remind (quick and easy communication), Talking Points (translation), and Kinvo.

  • Proactively ask families for their preferred method of communication, time of day for virtual meetings, etc.

Summary of Literature

  • Increased family engagement through effective communications is associated with stronger levels of parent trust, involvement, and support for school-based initiatives as well as student outcomes (Wood and Bauman 2017).

  • A June 2020 survey of about 1,500 Massachusetts residents revealed:

    • 32% of K-12 parents were not confident school reopening can be done safely. People of color, particularly Latino parents, were less likely to foresee a safe reopening (MassINC Polling Group 2020).

    • However, parents were largely positive about how their schools have confronted the pandemic, with 78% of parents rating their school’s response as excellent or good (MassINC Polling Group 2020).

    • Most parents (68%) reported that their schools/districts haven’t asked for their opinion on reopening (MassINC Polling Group 2020).

    • A small majority of parents (55%) said they would prefer a modified schedule upon reopening rather than waiting for a normal schedule to be feasible (MassINC Polling Group 2020).

    • The percentage of parents who believe their child is behind a grade level has grown from 13% to 22% over the course of the shutdown, and most parents say the school disruption has negatively impacted their child’s emotional well-being (MassINC Polling Group 2020).

1.2 Develop a plan for surveying families

Likely Implementation Level DISTRICT

Status

Priority Level

NOTE: Update your school's or district's status and priority level in your progress tracker (link at the bottom of the homepage).

Key Recommendations for Consideration

  • Develop a survey, accessible in mobile and web formats, for families to collect data on readiness for return.

  • Send the survey to families as soon as you are able, to allow you time to react to and incorporate the results into your plan.

  • Integrate the survey into your communication plan, include messages about the purpose of the survey and how it will support the plan to reopen.

  • Consider conducting surveys periodically to keep channels of communication open with families.

  • Identify barriers to reaching all families and develop methods to increase engagement.

Starting Point Tools

  • Topics on which to survey families:

    • The ability for families to do health screenings at home (e.g. temperature checks).

    • Comfort with safety protocols (e.g. masks worn by students).

    • Preference for three models proposed by states (in-person learning, hybrid in-person and remote learning, and fully remote learning) and difficulties they would have with any of those models.

    • Ability to transport their student(s) to school.

    • Access to technology and the internet at home.

    • Availability of an adult or older sibling to support students with homework.

  • TNTP/Transcend Education Sample pre-reopening surveys:

  • Flamboyan Foundation Strategies for Engaging Unreached Families

  • CCSSO Restart and Recovery: Sample metrics for monitoring family and community engagement + Survey and Screening Tools List

  • Panorama Education School Reopening Surveys (you will have to provide information in order to download)

Considerations and Questions for Team Decision-Making and Reflection

  • Consider options for allowing respondents to update their responses or re-survey as community cases or other factors change.

Other Resources

Country/District Examples

Middletown School District (OH) Parent Survey

VA DOE Return to School Equity Audit — see pages 2 and 3 for family and community engagement reflection questions.

Ideas

  • Consider using these surveys with the intention of "looking back" to the spring, and then compare results to reflect on remote learning 1.0.

1.3 Establish a partnership with the local health departments

Likely Implementation Level DISTRICT

Status

Priority Level

NOTE: Update your school's or district's status and priority level in your progress tracker (link at the bottom of the homepage).

Key Recommendations for Consideration

  • Identify a point person at each district or school to partner with the local health department and establish regular communication.

  • Work with the local health department to summarize information about local testing options and plans for vaccine distribution for families and staff.

  • Leverage state and local data such as local prevalence, positive testing rates, virus levels in sewer waste water (if data is available), and hospitalizations to make decisions (e.g. sources: MA COVID-19 dashboard, local department of health).

  • Use the COVID-19 response leader/team to enable agile decision-making in response to new emerging data.

  • Establish procedures to:

    • Communicate and interpret state and local infection rates for families and staff.

    • Assist the local health department with contact tracing.

Starting Point Tools

Considerations and Questions for Team Decision-Making and Reflection

  • What agreed upon norms will we explicitly create with health partners to gain clarity on roles and support effective, consistent engagement?

Other Resources

Country/District Examples

Ideas

  • Have daily or weekly briefings to discuss local infection rates and proactively address issues.

  • Ask health department teams for support streamlining data updates and communications to the community.

Guidelines

1.4 Create a program for student and staff training

Likely Implementation Level DISTRICT

Status

Priority Level

NOTE: Update your school's or district's status and priority level in your progress tracker (link at the bottom of the homepage).

Key Recommendations for Consideration

  • Determine what type of training is required.

  • Develop a staff training schedule and select a method for training (e.g., in person, livestream, recorded video, etc.).

Starting Point Tools

  • Possible training topics include:

    • Proper donning and doffing of PPE (staff and students).

    • Mask wearing (staff and students).

    • Distancing protocols, including in hallways and bathrooms (staff and students).

    • Procedures for cleaning surfaces (staff and students).

    • Proper hand-washing (staff and students).

    • Identifying sick students (staff).

    • Health education about coronavirus (staff and students).

    • Trauma-informed responses for students and staff. See NCSSLE Trauma Sensitive Schools Training Package

    • Risk communication with caregivers/parents (staff).

    • Movement to and through school buildings, such as entry, transitions, dismissal, etc. (staff and students).

    • How to use tools that facilitate physically distanced learning, such as learning management system, edtech learning program) (staff and students).

    • Transitioning students from in-person to online learning if the district is using a hybrid model or if buildings have to close (staff).


Please see principles throughout this guide (e.g. Masks and Personal Protective Equipment) for sample training resources.


Considerations and Questions for Team Decision-Making and Reflection

  • How will we ensure that training supports transferring knowledge and skills to practice, particularly given some of these skills will need to be learned remotely?

  • How will we work with staff unions to find additional time to provide these training sessions before buildings open? (Sessions like mandated reporter training will still need to take place in addition to these COVID-19 specific trainings.)

Other Resources

Ideas

  • Record video tutorials explaining each topic.

  • Create a student and staff handbook available online.

  • Develop online courses (could be housed on a learning management system such as Schoology) that staff can complete asynchronously during the summer as required professional development.

  • Provide health education resources and lesson plans that staff can use with their students.