COVID-19 Screening, Self-Certification, and Employee Portal

COVID-19 Screening, Self-Certification, and Employee Portal

Updated 8/12/2020: The software was released this evening and is now available.

8/10/2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most schools are adopting different procedures to safely deliver education.  This typically includes screening students and employees for COVID-19 before entering the building.  We are almost finished with software to allow employees and parents/guardians to complete a “COVID-19 screening” questionnaire and self-certify their lack of symptoms.  We expect it to be released in the next few days. 

COVID-19 Screening

The software supports students who are in-person at school, e-learning, or a hybrid of the two.  If students physically come to school, they must pass COVID-19 screening (completed by their parent/guardian) before entering the building.  If they are e-learning, they check-in online to e-learning.  Both can be completed on the parent/student portal.

For students coming to school for in-person instruction, the parent/guardian is prompted to complete a COVID-19 screening questionnaire when they log in to the system.

They complete one for each student.  The questions shown below are examples from a customer, and can be customized (more on this below).

Based upon responses to the questionnaire, the student will pass or fail the screening.  If they pass, they can come to school.  If they fail, they should not come to school (or be isolated if they do), and presumably seek medical care.

For students who are e-learning that day, they will be prompted to check-in to e-learning. You can find more info in our previous news articles.

(3/29) E-Learning Attendance Released

(4/15) Updates to E-Learning Attendance

Sorting Students

When students arrive at the school or bus, best practice is to verify that they passed COVID-19 screening prior to entry.  We provide a few UI’s for employees to easily access information and sort students.  Students who’ve passed screening can enter normally.  Other students (fail or no screening) can be routed to an isolation area and screened, or handled in another appropriate manner.

The first UI is very similar to our lunch scan and attendance terminal.  Students slide/scan their ID card, and it will fetch today’s screening status.  Employees can direct students to regular entry, or an isolation area depending on the result.  This process should be touchless and fast.

The second UI is for Mobile devices and lists students with their screening status.  Employees can stand by the door, swipe up or down to find the student, see their status, and sort them appropriately.  The student list can be filtered by school, bus route, class, etc. This shows the right population of students depending on whether the employee is by the front door, driving the bus, or by a classroom.  There’s also a desktop version of the page, but we think mobile will likely be most useful to staff when separating potentially infected students from everyone else.

We think there is a nice opportunity for screening on the school bus.  When students board the bus, the driver can check COVID-19 status on the mobile app.  Students who passed can enter normally.  If not, they can be isolated on the bus, sent back home, or handled in another appropriate way.

Isolation and Screening

Once students without a passing result have been isolated, they could be screened.  This could be done by the school nurse or other qualified individual.  They could take a student’s temperature with a touchless digital thermometer, ask questions, and complete the COVID-19 screening questionnaire.  Once a student passes, they can be sent to class and their status logged into the system.

If students fail screening (or can’t be screened for some reason), staff could contact the parent/guardian to come pick up their student.

Configuring the Questionnaire

The screening questionnaire is configurable.  Each organization can setup their own questions.  We preloaded a sample provided by a customer, but assume everyone will want their own questions.

Employee Portal 

We also added similar screening functionality for employees.  We added an “Employee Portal” where they can complete their own COVID-19 screening questionnaire.  Admins and teachers will see a new “Employee Portal” role when they log in or switch role.

For employees who do not currently have access to our system, a new “Employee Portal” role allows them to log in and complete the questionnaire.  This would apply to custodians, bus drivers, and others employees who typically don’t log in to our system today.   

We added a “Mass Create Employee Portal Users” page. There may be many employees that need access, and we give you one place to enter their email addresses.

If you subscribe to SchoolInsight Financials, the employee portal also allows employees to view check stubs, submit W-4 information, submit requests for purchase orders, etc. 

Scheduling Social Distance Inside Schools

To promote social distance, many schools are reducing the number of students in the building at a time.  This is often done by interleaving in-person instruction and e-learning.  Half the students come to school on “A” days, and the other half comes on “B” days.  To manage the process, academic calendars are created with days designated as in-person or e-learning.  

Students come to school based upon their day’s setting.  This can be viewed on the student/parent portal.

Multiple calendars can be created and assigned to different groups of students.  In this way the schedule could be configured to bring a smaller number of students into the building at a time. 

We do NOT plan to charge a subscription fee for employees who only log in to complete their own COVID-19 screening questionnaires on the employee portal.  This seems like a small amount of functionality and a large number of employees/cost.  However, if employees interact with student COVID-19 screening data, we think it’s reasonable to purchase admin subscriptions for them.  

Hopefully this release will help our customers successfully handle COVID-19.  The functionality is included in the Core SIS module, no other modules are required.  We expect to build additional features in later releases (more mobile apps, better questionnaire configuration, quarantine handling for students who can’t come to school for 14 days, and reporting).  Feel free to make suggestions by clicking the “Feedback” link.  Handling COVID-19 is new for everyone, and we want to evolve the software as schools gain experience and better understand their needs.

The Common Goal Team