While ensuring that school buildings meet safety requirements will require hard work, local school leaders can use some simple strategies. Regrettably, the education industry is struggling to adopt to the pandemic. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average age of a school building is 44 years old. Fortunately, America’s public schools have inventive professionals capable of rising to this challenge. Local school board members can facilitate the collaboration needed to transform schools into modern, well-designed, and safe environments. Rethink  At a recent con ..read more

Safeology makes UVC products that inactivate 99.9 percent of SARS-CoV-2, virtually eliminating the deadly virus. “We need to get our kids back in school.” From administrators, principals, and teachers to students, parents, and even employers, this has become our national battle cry as we wage war against COVID-19. In a collective effort spanning Seattle to Miami, Los Angeles to New York, we’re coming together to wash our hands, wear our masks, and keep six feet apart. But will it be enough? Recent guidelines from the CDC laid out numerous steps our nation’s schools should take to safely reopen ..read more

Healthier indoor environments in K-12 schools can positively impact students and staff. Now, new funding is helping to make upgrades and enhancements possible.  The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a massive challenge to schools. As debates on reopening take center stage, educators, parents, and students are forced to weigh concerns over reductions in student learning gains, emotional effects and getting back to work with concerns of health and physical safety. According to research conducted by Carrier and Syracuse University, leveraging a layered defense strategy for a healthier, safer e ..read more

Schools are at the heart of every community, and they need more funding and resources to focus on, and overcome, inequities. COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on our way of life. It has altered our routines, separated us from our communities, and shined a spotlight on inequities. Parents, children, and educators everywhere have come face-to-face with those inequities while navigating the uncertainty of returning to school safely. Schools are at the heart of every community, but not every school or district has partnerships with global health experts where they can ask questions, get help with securin ..read more

Despite our current cleaning protocols, the chemicals we use might not be the best for our bodies. As students and teachers look to get back to in-person learning full-time, there is something more important besides COVID-19 that needs to be addressed. The frequency in which we clean and disinfect our schools with harsh chemical cleaners can have serious long term health consequences. We cannot solve one health problem only to cause another. In fact, the EPA is currently recommending against cleaners such as bleach or quaternary ammonium compounds since they can lead to asthma, cancer, and rep ..read more

Amid troubling times, it’s time to help teenagers express their problems towards those who can help. We can all identify one moment in our lives when we didn’t quite have it all together but tried to make it seem as though we did. And in this process, we somehow lose our ability to just be human. We all experience obstacles in our lifetimes. Some of us share them openly, while others find comfort in dealing with them in privacy. But one thing we do know is that we cannot say for certain what the person next to us is dealing with. You can’t always see that your classmate is struggling with depr ..read more

Don’t assume every student is learning the same hygiene habits at home; it’s important to teach the basics. Kids don’t all learn the same hygiene routines at home. What one family teaches as “common sense” rules about topics like personal hygiene could be very different from what another family does. For example, some kids learn the “5-second rule” when it comes to food that’s fallen on the floor, while the same idea would be severely reprimanded by another set of parents or guardians. Challenging times require clever, cost-effective products that protect us and others. We’d like to introduce ..read more

As schools strive to safely conduct in-person learning, new funding is offering opportunities to harness the benefits of healthier indoor environments.  Rajan Goel Senior Vice President, Carrier Building Solutions Group What is one precaution schools can put in place to mitigate health risks for students? Every school building is different, and there are many aspects to creating safer and healthier indoor environments. From an engineering systems perspective, filtration can play a critical role in enhancing indoor air quality. In buildings with mechanical ventilation systems, existing ..read more

The events of 2020 have taken a toll on our schools’ academics, social-emotional learning, and most importantly, on safety. The brutal reality is that the events of 2020 have exacerbated the safety concerns that existed before the pandemic. The need to provide appropriate support for students at risk for violence against themselves has never been greater. And yet, school safety procedures simply are not present in most schools right now. As educators, we have to respond to the current public health crisis and prevent a future school safety crisis. This is the troubling question that every educ ..read more

Jeff Kaye President, School Safety Operations Inc. We cannot focus solely on the threat of the COVID-19 virus when considering how to safely open schools. Guidelines for reopening schools are geared only towards protecting against the spread of the virus. Recommendations, such as leaving doors open and wear face masks, leave schools vulnerable to unauthorized access by persons with possible ill intent. These health-related recommendations are necessary, but we must remember that manmade threats still exist. A secure perimeter is necessary in order to prevent unauthorized access to schools ..read more