Infectious Disease Prevention and Planning
Schools are an essential part of the infrastructure of communities and play a critical role in supporting the whole child, not just their academic achievement.
This course is intended to aid school administrators consider how to protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of students, teachers, other school staff, their families, and communities.
School administrators oversee the daily operations of K-12 schools and may include school district superintendents, school principals, and assistant principals.
Actions administrators can take to support schools' safe reopening and help them stay open during COVID-19 include:
- Engage and encourage everyone in the school and the community to practice preventive behaviors.
- Implement multiple SARS-CoV-2 mitigation strategies (e.g., social distancing, cloth face coverings, hand hygiene, and cohorting).
- Communicate, educate, and reinforce appropriate hygiene and social distancing practices in ways that are developmentally appropriate for students, teachers, and staff.
- Integrate SARS-CoV-2 mitigation strategies into co-curricular and extracurricular activities (e.g., limiting or canceling participation in activities where social distancing is not feasible).
- Maintain healthy environments (e.g., cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces).
- Make decisions that take into account the level of community transmission.
- Repurpose unused or underutilized school (or community) spaces to increase classroom space and facilitate social distancing, including outside spaces, where feasible.
- Develop a proactive plan for when a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19.
- Develop a plan with state and local health departments to conduct case tracing for positive cases.
- Educate parents and caregivers on the importance of monitoring for and responding to the symptoms of COVID-19 at home.
- Develop ongoing channels of communication with state and local health departments to stay updated on COVID-19 transmission and response.
Most importantly, administrators need to set a good example by always practicing preventive measures.
COVID-19 Pandemic
Note: We try to stay up to date on information from CDC and OSHA, it's important that you have access to the very latest developments.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
1-1. What is the most important leadership action administrators can take while operating schools during COVID-19?
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