Health & Safety
The Parabola Project has identified nine core public health principles to guide districts’ plans and strategies for safely reopening schools. Each principle includes concrete and actionable toolkits along with field examples and other resources.
The principles are summarized with key resources below, and you can find deeper explanations in our School Reopening Readiness Guide. The principles should be considered together as they are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. You may not be able to follow all of these principles perfectly all of the time, but their effectiveness depends on implementing as many as possible at the same time. The more you adhere to these principles, the lower the risk of viral transmission and repeated school closures.
System-Level Supports
These principles are essential for driving alignment, improvement, and coherence across a district. They are ideally centralized at the system-level and implemented by district administrators and teams.
Principle 1: Leadership & Culture
Promote a leadership approach and culture around health that build trust between leaders and the school community, make agile data-driven decisions, take a balanced view of health/education risks, and emphasize resilience.
Toolkit: Communicating About Reopening Measures with Families
Quick Example: Getting Staff Input on Safety Procedures to Get Them Meaningfully into the Game
Quick Example: Early Lessons in Productive Over-communication
Quick Example: Welcoming Students Back With Joy
Principle 2: Risk Stratification & Prevention
Perform regular individual and family COVID-19 risk assessments for students and staff to determine who can participate in in-person learning, facilitate access to key childhood and flu vaccines, and promote immune system strengthening practices.
Tool: A Balanced View of Risk
Toolkit: Risk Reduction Strategies for Reopening Schools (from Harvard’s Healthy Buildings for Health)
Tool: Indicators and Thresholds for Community Transmission of COVID-19 (from the CDC)
Tool: Vaccine and Immunization Overview (from the CDC)
Tool: High Risk Categories (from the CDC)
Principle 3: Testing & Tracing
Coordinate with local public health systems for school closures, testing, and quarantine of individuals with COVID-19 and for establishing protocols for public health system contact tracing for school community members who test positive for COVID-19.
Toolkit: Process for a Positive COVID-19 Case Among Staff/Student(s)
Quick Example: Cedar Rapids’ Approach to In-Person Learning
Deep Dive: Working with Your Local Board of Health
Toolkit: Covid-19 Testing in K-12 Settings: A Playbook for Educators and Leaders (from the Rockefeller Foundation)
School-Level Supports
These principles must take into account existing facility layout, student populations, staffing, and timelines. Decisions are then implemented on a day-to-day basis by school leadership teams.
Principle 4: Screening & Triage
Screen for symptoms of COVID-19 daily, instruct staff and students to stay home if any symptoms are present, and create space within the school for children and staff to isolate before going home if they develop symptoms during the school day.
Quick Example: Self-Screening Protocol for Parents
Toolkit: Restart & Recovery Plan (from CCSSO)
Principle 5: Space Layout & Air Quality
Assess design and configuration of the school building and other spaces for adequate airflow, ventilation, and safer movement of people within and between spaces.
Toolkit: Bathroom and Water Breaks
Toolkit: School Air Quality Assessment Guide
Toolkit: Winter Addendum - Air Quality Guide
Deep Dive: Arrival and Dismissal
Toolkit: COVID-19 Safety Guides for Specific School Spaces (from Yale School of Public Health)
Tool: Why Ventilation is Key to Reopening Schools Interactive (from the New York Times)
Principle 6: Cohorting & Scheduling
Group students and staff together in limited numbers, keep the same individuals together in each group, and limit inter-group contact to reduce the number of individuals exposed to each other.
Quick Example: Revamp High School Schedules to Minimize Contact
Tool: Recovery to Reinvention: Master Schedule & Facilitates Plan (from Transcend)
Classroom-Level Supports
These principles are critical to day-by-day learning and safety, providing front-line teachers with processes, tools, and practices for working with students and other staff members. These principles are highly local and reflect classroom-level context for teachers.
Principle 7: Masks & PPE
Require all children and staff to wear a cloth or medical mask covering both mouth and nose at all times and provide appropriate PPE to nurses and individuals assessing or treating a suspected case.
Toolkit: Building a Mask Culture
Quick Example: Mask-Wearing to Reduce the Risks of COVID-19
Tool: Choosing & Wearing Masks
Tool: Creating & Reusing Masks
Principle 8: Hygiene (Personal & Space)
Require all children and staff to clean hands (via hand-washing, sanitizing), clean and wipe down surfaces, especially high-touch surfaces, and conduct deep cleaning of building spaces to reduce exposure to COVID-19 droplets.
Deep Dive: Safe Mealtime Procedures in Schools
Principle 9: Density & Distance
Limit the number of people in enclosed spaces and allow distance between people to reduce exposure to COVID-19 droplets.
Toolkit: Bus Driver Support
Deep Dive: Teachers Adapt to New Classroom Constraints
Toolkit: Public Schools Facilities Planning in the Ear of COVID-19 Guide (from Equity by Design)
Took: School Buildings. and Social Distancing (from EdWeek)
Interested in learning more about the nine public health principles?
Take a closer look at the public health principles in our corresponding School Reopening Readiness Guide, which provides an in-depth view of each principle, considerations, and additional resources.
The guide is intended to be used by reopening committees or leadership teams to develop a comprehensive plan for reopening and identify action steps under each principle and corresponding objectives. The guide also includes a progress tracker for teams to utilize, along with the latest literature on COVID-19.