3 Unexpected Ways Schools Can Protect Their Students from Covid-19 in the School Year
Highly contagious, and spreading rampantly through unvaccinated populations, the Delta variant is the biggest threat to the safety of our school children today. But after a year of distance learning, students and their families are desperate to get back to school. According to the CDC:
“Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority.”
With schools reopening all across America, and since children under the age of 12 are currently unable to receive a vaccination, the CDC is encouraging schools to layer their mitigation strategies through a combination of indoor masking, distancing, and health screening.
An unexpected Covid-19 mitigation strategy—Automate school dismissals
What school officials may not have considered before, however, is the fact that there are efficient and affordable technological ways to help keep school children safe from Covid-19 as well. By using a convenient app that allows parents to change their children’s dismissal plans from their smartphone or computer, schools can also use the app to:
Control the way students are grouped together
Keep hallway congestion down
Screen their students for Covid-19 symptoms before they leave home for school.
The PickUp Patrol Automated Dismissal System is one such application that can easily help schools layer their mitigation measures to protect their school communities from Covid-19 variants.
Tracking dismissal plan changes keeps students safe
PickUp Patrol automatically compiles dismissal plan change information for schools, providing the office with complete oversight. Features like absence reporting, late arrival and early dismissal tracking, customized dismissal reports, and automatic teacher notifications help ensure that each student is dismissed safely to their correct after-school destinations.
Use the app to create multiple exit points & staggered dismissal times
Beyond tracking dismissal plan changes, PickUp Patrol makes it possible for schools to create staggered dismissal times and multiple exit points to cut down on hallway congestion and parent pickup traffic. Schools can also email and/or print lists from the system to their dismissal personnel at a set time each day—especially great for bus drivers and daycare providers.
Here are 3 unexpected ways PickUp Patrol helps protect students from Covid-19:
Dismiss students directly from the classroom: With PickUp Patrol, schools can announce the arrival of cars, buses, parent walk-ups, etc. with the simple tap of a button. With the ZipLane™ Car Line Tracker, students can be dismissed directly from the classroom or from another centralized location without walkie talkies or PA systems, keeping students in smaller groups while also speeding up the dismissal process. Click HERE to see how it works.
Contact-free check-in/out: When parents arrive to either check their student in for a late arrival or check their students out for an early dismissal, they use the app to e-sign their students in and out. The app notifies the office when parents arrive—allowing parents to remain outside—which cuts down on the number of people that come into the school building.
Daily Health Screening: Built right into the app, parents answer simple yes-or-no questions that the school can customize regarding their students’ Covid-19 risk factors before they leave for school. The school can determine when the screenings should be submitted each morning, and have a Dashboard that provides all the information they need to see who is safe to enter the building. The school can follow up easily with parents who have not yet submitted their students’ screening for the day. For more information about the PickUp Patrol Daily Health Screener, click HERE.
PickUp Patrol Automated Dismissal System—Safe & Secure
PickUp Patrol is FERPA compliant and follows national standards for data security. The system is school-administered with authorized changes, parent confirmations, and secure data protection. It integrates seamlessly with school information systems as well.
Covid-19 variants are complicating the back-to-school landscape
Schools are looking for creative ways to keep their school communities safe from the Covid-19 Delta variant. In addition to following the guidance from the CDC, they can rely on the PickUp Patrol Automated Dismissal system—created with the help of school secretaries—to provide a convenient, easy-to-use, affordable, and actionable mitigation strategy that will also organize and streamline their current dismissal system.
For more information, contact PickUp Patrol HERE.