How to Reopen your Campus Safely with Technology

During this time of uncertainty with the constant cycle of varying recommendations and guidelines on COVID-19, one thing is for certain: keeping children safe is the number one priority for educational institutions. 

As schools start to open up after winter break it is important to stay ahead of the recommendations and guidelines for the health and wellness of students and faculty. In this article, Visitu will share the best practices to reopening learning facilities, tips on how technology can improve the safety measures put into place to keep students and faculty safe, and the steps necessary to take if there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in your school.

Best Practices for Reopening Schools:

Below is a list of recommendations and guidelines from the CDC that will help keep learning facilities as safe as possible from COVID-19 cross-contamination.

• A mask is required to be worn by everyone in the building, including students, faculty, staff, and visitors
• All student desks should be turned in the same direction
• Tape on the floor to indicate safe spacing of desks.

• Reduce the areas in which students congregate
• Different Start Times
• Rotating Classrooms
• One-Way Hallways
• Getting Rid of Common Locker Areas
• Have students use desk and backpacks instead

• Encourage outdoor classes, and if not available, improve ventilation by opening windows and circulating air with a fan.
• If windows are not an option, use a HEPA air purifier.
• Here is an Article on California Certified air-cleaners
• Here is an article on Harvard’s size recommendation
• Re-purpose other spaces such as cafeterias and gyms to serve as temporary overflow classrooms.

• Cohort your students; i.e. keeping the same students together all day long
• This will make it easier for contact tracing

• Provide children with information about how to protect themselves
• Promote best hand washing and hygiene practices and providing hygiene supplies
• Hand washing stations or alcohol-based hand rub dispensers.
• Daily access to adequate supplies to support hand hygiene, including safe water and a consistent supply of soap, alcohol-based hand rub with at least 60% alcohol content, or ingredients for making hand washing solution.
• School administrators/staff to enforce hand hygiene practice upon entry and exit of school.

• Clean and disinfect school buildings, especially water and sanitation facilities
• Limit nonessential visitors

How Technology Can Improve School Health and Wellness:

The Visitu SafeCampus platform can help you keep your campus open, safe, and in compliance. Touch-free check-in, wellness screening, contact tracing, and capacity management are just some of the ways Visitu protects your people and helps you manage campus safety.

• Touch-Free Check-In

Safe, secure, and super simple, the Visitu’s visitor kiosk allows you to set up your front desk check-in to be completely touch-free upon entrance. Visitors easily check-in by facial ID or by scanning their quick badge or employee badge and finish the check-in process using the free Visitu mobile app.

• School Health Screening

With Visitu, you can survey visitors when they arrive, but more importantly, you can screen your students and staff before they enter your campus. Ask simple questions about recent travel and the current state of health using the customizable survey tool. Share a public link to allow your survey to be taken via email or Visitu mobile app. Set up schedule notifications, such as sending out a survey reminder to all parents/guardians of students at 7 am daily. Based on survey answers, designated personnel will be alerted if a high-risk person might be entering your campus.

• School Contact Tracing

Contact tracing involves identifying people who are likely to get sick because of being in contact with those who have tested positive. Contact tracing is a critical component of safely staying open and remaining open.

If someone has attended your campus and tests positive for COVID-19 coronavirus at a later date, Visitu's contact tracing tool allows you to easily trace when they were in the building, along with all other visitors to the premises during that time.

• Digital Agreements

You can easily require a visitor’s signature regarding coronavirus policies at your campus with the digital agreements feature. Simply upload your agreement and check the required signature box for visitors to acknowledge before they may proceed with the check-in process.

• Waitlist

Ensure only a set amount of visitors may be on campus at a time. When that limit is reached, visitors will be added to a waitlist. They may remain in their vehicle, outside, or other designated space. Once you are ready for them to enter your campus, the Visitu visitor management tool will send them a notification instructing them to proceed with the check-in process.

• Attendance

The traditional parent call-ins to school can be a hassle and time consuming for the school’s receptionist. Instead, parents can easily use the Visitu mobile app to schedule the late arrivals, early dismissals, and absences of a student. This will reduce front office manual work and allow parents to communicate efficiently while also helping with social distancing for the staff. Attendance statuses are in real time on our dashboard. Administrators can view live and historical attendance at any time.

What to do if a COVID-19 case occurs:

• Establish procedures to ensure students and staff who become sick at school or who arrive at school sick are sent home as soon as possible. Keep anyone sick separate from well students and staff until the sick person can be sent home.
• Set-up a communication plan that quickly notifies students, parents/guardians, faculty and staff to remind them to take the correct precautions.
• After communicating a confirmed case, schools will need to track those the affected individual came into contact with.
• According to the CDC, schools may need to temporarily dismiss classes for 2-5 days, if a student or staff member attended school before being confirmed as having COVID-19. This initial short-term dismissal allows time for the local health officials and the school to contact trace to gain a better understanding of the COVID-19 situation impacting the school and for custodial staff to clean and disinfect the affected facilities.

Conclusion: Implementing recommendations and guidelines for COVID-19 can be overwhelming, but here at Visitu we’re committed to helping you keep your campus open and safe with seamless safety features, such as school health screening, in our SafeCampus Platform.

As school administrators and educators, your number one priority is keeping students and staff safe. Training your staff and faculty with these easy to follow COVID-19 protocols will ensure a secure environment for everyone on campus. Leave the rest up to Visitu. 

Visitu designed a flexible iPad-based campus safety platform that’s connected to the Visitu safety cloud. It’s this architecture that allows Visitu to be rapidly deployed at any campus without having to install any software on your local PCs or servers. As a service offering, Visitu’s team manages the platform so that once configured, your local team can just focus on using Visitu to safeguard your campus, so school administrators and educators can put students first.

Visitu SafeCampus software can help you keep your organization open, safe, and in compliance during the pandemic. Improving your school’s safety protocols and student health screening begins with a conversation. Please contact us at 813.591.4800 or schedule a demo today to get started.