I have gotten a few emails from administrators at nearby schools and one from across the country, asking for a copy of my updated infectious disease response. This is because in 2003 when the SARS outbreak approached California, I was involved in the development of our school’s plan, which was then shared with other schools — and my name and email address is on that memo, which several schools have now dug out of their hanging file folders (that’s how long ago 2003 was…).

I am no longer in an administrator role and have therefore directed those emails to folks at other schools who have prepared detailed plans worth sharing.

Below are some thoughts I’ve had which those going through this for the first time might want to consider.

Digital Schooling

Call it whatever you like (eg, Digital School, Digital Learning, Virtual Classes), most schools facing an extended closure have a plan for teaching and learning to continue in an online environment. This is of course predicated on several assumptions: students have mobile computing devices available, electricity in their homes, and internet access.¹

To make this ‘digital schooling’ work, there is some nuance.

Employee Handbook

In 2003 most of our faculty was not yet using a website to organize course materials or post class assignments. To nudge faculty along this path, a brief section was added to the employee handbook, roughly stating:

In the event of an extended school closure, faculty will continue to be paid if they continue to teach.

LMS

A website and Macromedia Dreamweaver was adequate for posting assignments and providing digital copies of handouts, it was unidirectional communication, and in the case of an extended school shutdown, students need to do more: they need to take quizzes, post to forums, submit assignments — and faculty need to grade and provide feedback. All of this necessitates a modern learning management system (LMS).² Frankly, I assume every school now has one; using it for two-way communication is a different story though.

Triggering mechanism

As one administrator told me, deciding when to close the campus and switch to virtual schooling “is the $64k question.” Most schools are not going public with their deciding factor. No school wants to be first; all are hoping that either a neighboring school does it first or that the government orders schools closed. Neither is adequate.

Those that have set a bright-line of their own have chosen “the first student diagnosed with coronavirus” and they’ll close the school. That’s not good enough either because the CDC says there is a 2- to 14-day incubation period, when someone is infected and is asymptomatic. That means: before a student is diagnosed, they will have been walking around, infecting others for between 2- and 14-days. Taking 7-days as an easy number to calculate, with COVID-19’s current R0 of 2.3, one infected individual can be the source of 300,000 other infections.

In short, by the time a student is diagnosed, they will already have spread it to the rest of the school.

If I had to create a policy for a school under these circumstances, instead of SARS, I’d tell parents and guardians: if anyone at your place of employment gets diagnosed, tell us, and we’ll close the campus.

The first student to contract COVID-19 will get it at home, and then bring it to campus. Shutting school down before that can happen is the key.

Policies which punish responsible choices

Further, consider students’ and parents’ unwillingness to call in sick. There are institutional punishments for that which need to be changed during times like this. Most schools have a policy akin to: “Miss X days, and not get credit for the course.” This drives sick kids to school where they simply infect others. Those policies need to be eliminated.

Social channel

Most schools assume that students have “the social media” and will keep in touch with friends and classmates there. If a school switches to ‘digital schooling’ it would be good for them to set up a system for students to stay in social contact with classmates. Imagine a school wide Slack channel and grade-level specific Slack channels. With some system like that, students will be able to stay in touch and maintain some semblance of social contact – just as they would at school. Further, by the school setting up the system, everyone is included (versus student-created group-chats, which will inevitably leave someone out, causing hurt), and the chatter can be monitored by the school.

Conclusion

The plan we developed in 2003 for the SARS outbreak is in some regards still the plan; in other ways, it needs to be modernized. No school needs to do this alone; there are experts around that are only too happy to provide assistance — from the NAIS down to the local unified school district. They key is deciding when to implement the campus shut-down, and then handling all of the necessary communication with parents and guardians well in advance of anything.