Health Screening Tools: 5 Questions Schools Should Ask
This article was updated on September 14, 2021, to reflect the most up-to-date number of health screenings performed since the introduction of the Health Screening Form in August 2020, which is over 20 million.
Districts and schools across the United States are expanding in-person learning for students. With a return to campus also comes the need to screen students and staff for COVID-19 to keep school communities safe. With so many moving parts, how can districts and schools successfully collect, interpret, and report COVID-19 data daily?
We recently spoke with our very own Matt Miquelon, Director of Product Management and the force behind ParentSquare’s school Health Screening Forms and workflows. Having helped more than 1,200 schools and districts establish robust health screening processes, resulting in over 20 million screenings to date, Matt identified five critical questions to ask when evaluating solutions:
MATT: Since August 2020, we’ve supported dozens of health screening scenarios, from at-home, staff-only screening form submission, to on-site ‘all-clear’ pre-screen badge verification plus manual screening for those students who didn’t submit a form. School districts in the U.S. are commonly supporting fully remote learning scenarios alongside on-site learning scenarios, which require different health screening workflows. Make sure that your tools can support multiple scenarios as well as both at home and on site health screening.
The ParentSquare platform allows admins to select who receives the Health Screening Form.
Do you have a way for parents to fill out a screening form on behalf of their child while allowing high school-aged students to self-screen? Are you able to get the majority of students and staff screened before they step foot on campus or the school bus?
Can students show proof of screening to the bus driver or when they arrive on-site? How quick is it for screening staff to verify a student’s status, or enter a manual health screening for the student or employee, if necessary?
Look carefully at available health screening form solutions to make sure they support all of your health screening scenarios and expedite your campus entry processes.
Customer Experience:Lake Elsinore Unified School District (CA) was an early adopter of ParentSquare’s Health Screening Form, and found it to be invaluable for the various stages of school re-openings they have experienced since the start of the school year. Switching from staff-only COVID-19 screenings to staff and student screenings was very simple to manage.
MATT: We see K-12 staff, educators and parents taking on so many more administrative, time-consuming tasks due to the pandemic, work they have to handle on top of everything else that already needs to get done! It’s so important to assess how much time and effort health screening forms and workflows will create for everyone, including parents, students, educators and staff.
You’ll want to avoid tools that make parents enter data that the school already has, as well as tools that can’t support learning cohorts – parents get annoyed if they’re reminded to submit forms on days their students are not supposed to be on- site. Lastly, look for solutions that integrate with the school’s database of record so staff don’t have to upload .CSV files or manually fix entries that don’t match, etc.
Parents can find all of their children in one convenient place and ParentSquare auto-populates information for each.
Parents have experienced so much stress amid the pandemic, so if your COVID-19 screening process takes place before school each day, make sure it’s easy for parents to complete. That means your system should integrate with your database of record and auto-populate information the school already knows, so a parent doesn’t have to input the same details every day.
Imagine how time-consuming it could be for a parent with multiple children to fill out electronic (or paper) forms for every child in the mornings with information like school, student name, ID number, parent name, and signature.
The same applies to districts and schools. They can’t afford to miss out on any more in-person instruction time with cumbersome health screening processes. So if you’re manually screening students and staff with a paper or standalone system that does not integrate with your database, consider how long it will take to process everyone when they arrive on-site. Once your health screenings are complete, who processes the data, and how can you act on it if you need to create a report or alert your school community of a positive case?
Ideally, you should have one place where all data is securely stored with the ability to analyze and generate reports. A robust reporting system plays a central role in a district or school’s ability to effectively and accurately convey its COVID-19 information to its community as well as local, state, and federal entities—if needed—at a moment’s notice.
Customer Experience:Mill Valley School District (CA) has parents of students complete the ParentSquare Health Screening Form each day to inform their school if their child has any COVID-19 related symptoms or exposure. In the case that a parent forgets to fill out the form for their child, teachers can easily complete the form on a student’s behalf. With the Health Screening Form built into the ParentSquare platform, users don’t have to re-enter their contact information each time, and staff can access the data in real-time after it’s submitted. This streamlined process allows for clean reports and the ability for staff to instantly see if a student is cleared or not to attend school.
MATT: We encourage districts to understand how tools handle heath screening data and who is allowed access to the information collected from staff, educators and students. Having protections all along the path, from authenticating users through the SIS, to securely storing the data and providing robust access controls, allows schools and districts to meet privacy and security requirements.
As with any student information, security should always be a priority. Does your district or school have a secure process in place to collect student COVID-19 screening information? If you use a platform or standalone system, verify that it adheres to state student privacy laws (if applicable) and is FERPA-compliant in alignment with federal student privacy laws.
Once you collect student screening data, who has access to it? Do you have the capability to grant specific staff members access to screening results with your current process? For example, it is helpful for teachers to have a clear indication of missing responses or if any student is exhibiting symptoms so they can act accordingly. And, of course, principals and district staff need access to data to fulfill county, state, and CDC requirements on contact tracing and reporting.
Finally, staff, parents, and students shouldn’t have to create yet another user name and password to fill out a daily health screening form. Make sure the tool you’re evaluating will integrate with your Single-Sign-On solution.
Customer Experience: Kings Canyon Unified School District (CA) students and staff can feel more comfortable returning to in-person/hybrid learning, knowing that those around them do not have symptoms or exposure to COVID-19. With such a strong plan in place for handling safety guidelines including ParentSquare’s Health Screening Form, the district has experienced zero cases of COVID-19 transmission after returning to in-person learning.
MATT: Forward-thinking districts kept their equity goals in mind when they decided how to roll out health screening for their staff and students. How will your parent-guardians or students facing socio-economic barriers be supported? It’s important to meet families where they are, which means communicating in their preferred language even for forms! We also saw a lot of districts that understood you can’t reach every family with one type of communication – you need email AND text AND app capabilities, and probably paper, face-to-face and over-the-phone options.
Forms can easily be translated in the languages a school supports.
Implementing a screening process that all staff, parents, and students have access to, no matter their situation plays a crucial role in creating safer school communities amid COVID-19. That means health screenings should be available in multiple languages, preferably in the languages your ELL families speak. Does your current system provide forms in languages other than English?
Another thing to consider is opting for a system that is platform agnostic and works across all devices, allowing everyone to access an electronic health screening form no matter what device they use. If your current process isn’t accessible to every single person in your district or school, then there are equity gaps that need to be addressed.
Customer Experience:Oakland Unified School District (CA) provides the ParentSquare Health Screening Form in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese to support its diverse school community.
Supplemental questions allow for evolving COVID-19 health screening protocol.
MATT:New requirements have come up over the last nine months, causing schools to adjust, amend or expand their health screening forms and processes. Customers are changing their forms as context changes, such as when learning scenarios shift, when CDC or state guidelines or reporting requirements change, and most recently as teachers have been able to get vaccinated. Districts will want to not only consider their current requirements but also make sure whatever tools they use can support future scenarios.
States have varying COVID-19 requirements and protocols that districts and schools must follow, and with the rollout of the vaccine, many are finding they need to evaluate who is and who is not yet vaccinated.
Is your platform or standalone system ready to shift with evolving local and state-specific protocol? Does it allow you to customize or edit screening questions like temperature thresholds or vaccination status to reflect the most up-to-date criteria that staff and students need to meet?
Customer Experience: Garden Grove Unified School Districts (CA) leverages the Custom Forms option for the staff and student screenings at 60+ sites since it provides them the most flexibility for their specific screening requirements and processes.
How ParentSquare Can Help
We hope this information helps you as you evaluate your current or future COVID-19 screening workflows! ParentSquare’s Health Screening Form incorporates the ease of use, flexibility, security, low administrative overhead, and equity alignment that many districts and schools are looking for in a health screening process. Better yet, our Health Screening Form is completely integrated within the ParentSquare platform, the only fully unified product that engages every family with school communications and communications-based services all in one place.
If your school district is looking to roll out a quick, convenient, and secure COVID-19 screening process, we would love to help.
Does the Tool Support All Desired Screening Scenarios?
