#Showup2020 Podcast: Safer Schools During the Pandemic
Facilitron’s Director of Education and Community Engagement Cheryl Galloway joined noted career and executive coach John Neral on his weekly podcast #SHOWUP2020 to discuss Cheryl’s background as a school safety expert and her work with Facilitron to help schools reopen across the country. The episode is part of a series of podcasts about education and school reopening.
In this excerpt, John asked Cheryl to discuss what it’s like to try to reopen schools safely and keep them open? Cheryl’s response highlighted Facilitron’s new Attendee Management feature which is being offered by Facilitron to any school district in the country for use at all their schools with no cost or obligation.
“You're going to have cases… so it comes down to when there is a case, do you have the information that you need, so that you can stay open…?”
The anecdote recounts how the data from Facilitron’s system had been used by a partner district to avoid a shutdown after public health notified them that someone who tested positive had visited an elementary school in the district.
What we had happen at a school site is the school site was notified by public health, that someone had gone in, taken a COVID test, tested positive. When that happens, the COVID test center notifies public health, and public health interviewed that person.
"Where have you been in the last 10 days?"
That person told them that they had been at this elementary school on a Thursday. So then public health notified the school district, you had somebody in your elementary school on Thursday who has tested positive. Do you have any information about that day?
The school district went to Attendee Management, pulled a sheet that told public health, every single person who was at school that day, the time they arrived and the time they left. Public health never told the school district who the infected person was. They only said the day. So that notification went to public health.
The next day, public health called the district and said, we have figured out there were 12 people that could have been exposed to this one person. We have notified those 12 people. They need to quarantine, but you can keep your school open.
And so the district was very hands off, but was able to provide enough information that they were not shut down by the public health department. They were able to continue. When we saw that, we knew Attendee Management was a good thing, because whether there's a pandemic or not, I'm a firm believer. You should know who is on your campus. You don't let people in your backyard. Well, you shouldn't let people on your campus either without knowing who they are!
Listen to the full podcast below:
Visit the podcast homepage at anchor.fm to hear all the #ShowUp2020 episodes .