In addition to normal responsibilities, school leaders must now also build social distancing guidelines as part of their educational and security plan.
A district’s superintendent, IT director, director of operations, district administrator, building administrators, principals, and related K-12 staff are all important in shaping these new health, safety, and security measures to protect everyone during COVID-19.
A good visitor management system should support these efforts naturally and without a lot of additional stress. Here’s a look at how your school’s visitor management system can help you implement your plan to prevent, track, and manage the spread of Coronavirus.
Features to Look For in a Visitor Management System during COVID-19
Visitor Limits to Enforce Social Distancing Guidelines
In order to enforce best practices in social distancing for K-12, most school districts will need to reduce the number of students and staff on each campus at a time. This will involve staggered schedules, whether organized by days or by mornings and afternoons, as reported in District Administration.
To insure limits are followed, a K-12 visitor management system (VMS) should allow schools within each district to set, track, and report unique visitor limits – down to each building.
Preventative Health Screening
It’s important to build a health questionnaire into your visitor registration process. This way people at risk of carrying the Coronavirus can be flagged and handled according to the district’s formal process with minimum personal contact in support of social distancing.
Consider your criteria carefully, but remember to track only “yes” or “no” answers to maintain compliancy with existing regulations around specific symptoms or health information.
Including very clear instructions to both the guard and visitor on how to follow up when screenings are failed is also key. As a district-level leader, now you can easily reinforce new processes, guaranteeing compliance. Building these steps into your VMS is much more effective than sending out a memo and hoping everyone follows through!
Trend Indicators in Health Screenings
Your system should also track long-term trends in health screening failures. Ideally, rates of failure can be tracked and displayed graphically via the school visitor management software’s administrative dashboard.
Quickly reviewing the past 30 days to see the trend over time can help administrators catch any increase in potential infections and implement stricter social distancing guidelines.
Track Criteria
Administrators should also have quick access to the current threshold that has been set in order to “fail” the health screening. This allows a review of the strictness of the criteria that you have set. It can then be compared against any increase in health screening failures to determine if rates of infection have likely increased or if criteria have simply been tightened.
Maintain Contact List
An ideal school visitor management system will have a health screening feature that allows you to download a report showing names, contact information, date of visits, and number of questions visitors failed. This will allow administrators to reach out as required by district policies.
Trending in Visits to the Nurse
As a part of coronavirus prevention and management, districts should track visits to the nurse through their VMS. A dashboard that quickly provides a visual graphic of the rate of visits over a 30 day period is also key.
This helps administrators track when there is an upward swing in visits so that additional preventative measures can be put in place. A contact list should also be kept for this criteria.
Flexibility to Fit the Changing Landscape: Free Lunch Pickup
There may be quick-changing or unclear guidance from state or federal governments regarding what policies are mandated. Many school administrators are at risk of being caught flat-footed. Having a flexible system and responsive support team is key.The nature of the virus and the needs of your community may change quickly. Look for school visitor management software that is highly adaptable.For example, towards the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak, EduQueue client Union City Public Schools was given 2 business days by the state to implement socially distant free lunch and technology pickup. Union City is the third most densely populated city in the US*.
Union City Outcomes with Flexible K-12 Visitor Management Software
- System in place within 1 business day (ahead of state mandate)
- 200,000 free lunches and 2,500 Chromebooks given out in 7 weeks
- 5-10 seconds to scan students in with their ID barcode
- No waiting time, crowds, or complaints
- Single daily event with simple user interface easy for guards to access and use
- Data comparable for day-to-day and week-to-week reporting
“Because of the speed, we don’t get groups accumulating. It helps with social distancing. Using our old system, this would have been a challenge. People have been amazed, happy, satisfied – no complaints, no waiting time.” – Victor Grullon, Security Integration Manager for Union City Public Schools
*Statistic based on 2010 Census from the US Census Bureau
