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 conference, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) presented seven questions on evaluating the risk level of certain settings. Questions included how long, how close, how many people are in a space, and whether there are points of high congestion.

Let’s use school hallways as an example. Using CDC guidance, school officials can institute directional guidance in hallways to control traffic flow, reconsider schedules and room assignments, and strategically place staff to monitor movement.

Invest

The CDC recommends schools consider ventilation system upgrades — an important step for the 30 percent of school buildings whose ventilation systems were rated as “fair” or “poor” in 2016. Schools will also need to invest in updated technology and infrastructure.

Of course, schools are already hamstrung by budget limitations. That’s why NSBA is working with the Biden administration to make funding K-12 education infrastructure a top priority.

Districts can save time finding a qualified, compliant service provider by using BuyBoard, a free-to-join online purchasing cooperative formed by NSBA and several of our state associations. 

Look ahead

In a spring 2020 RAND survey, principals listed “planning for future school closures or other emergencies” as a top priority when school buildings reopen. Creating comprehensive plans will ensure schools can pivot their physical spaces when the next disaster strikes.

As schools reconsider how they use their spaces, they should also reimagine what the ideal classroom could look like and how technology can play a role.

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“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 and return to in-person learning. Among them is using UVC light (also known as ultraviolet germicidal radiation) to kill SARS-CoV-2 quickly and safely, the virus that causes COVID-19.

How UVC helps

Let’s take it back to 9th grade science class for a moment. While UVC technically doesn’t kill a virus, it does penetrate the virus’s cell wall to permanently damage its DNA or RNA. Once damaged, the virus can’t replicate. So, for all intents and purposes, it’s as if the virus is dead.

UVC disinfection has been used for decades to kill, or eliminate, deadly pathogens in hospitals. And now schools are turning to this same technology to eliminate COVID-19. Two of the most popular products in use are UVC Upper Room Fixtures and UVC Mobile Air Purifiers.

UVC Upper Room Fixtures are relatively inexpensive, quick, and easy to install. They provide safe, continual air disinfection while people are present. And they eliminate 99.9 percent of airborne pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2.

UVC Mobile Air Purifiers offer the same virus-killing UVC technology, but also incorporate carbon and HEPA filters that trap viruses and remove dust, pollen, and other irritants from the air, making them ideal to combat not only COVID-19, but allergies, colds, and asthma.

As our knowledge of COVID-19 continues to grow, scientists now say airborne transmission is our biggest threat. Using Upper Room Fixtures and Mobile Air Purifiers, schools can quickly harness the proven power of UVC technology to virtually eliminate that threat.

The post Here’s How UVC Kills COVID-19 and Meets CDC Guidelines appeared first on Education and Career News.

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 environment can reduce transmission of airborne pathogens by up to 80 percent and turn schools into powerful tools for student health and progress moving forward.

New Research Shows Building Strategies Can Reduce Risk of Airborne Transmission of Pathogens by up to 80%.

Now, $54 billion in new government funding is making improvements more attainable for schools across the country. Passed in late December 2020, the omnibus spending bill outlined the United States federal budget for 2021 and set aside billions for COVID-19-related stimulus efforts. More than $54 billion of the funding aims to address needs across a range of categories in K-12 schools, including updating HVAC systems and safety supplies.

The impact of healthier schools

By high school graduation, children and adolescents will have spent approximately 15,600 hours in school. The well-being of students is directly tied to the health of their learning environments. In fact, research shows that making school buildings healthier, especially with respect to ventilation and air quality, will yield resilient schools that are more prepared to support students in future outbreaks and improve overall student well-being and performance.

• For every hour increase in the air exchange rate in schools, there was a 12 percent decrease in sick days.
• Poorly ventilated classrooms showed a 5 percent decrease in “power of attention,” roughly equivalent to the impact that a student might feel if skipping breakfast.
• Students in classrooms that received portable mechanical ventilation system interventions performed faster and more accurately on computerized tasks.

With an understanding of the impact that healthier indoor environments can have on students and staff, the next question facing schools is how to make these environments possible. The reality is, there’s no single strategy for creating safer and healthier environments. Instead, a layered defense strategy should be implemented, where multiple interventions including behavioral changes and engineering systems must be implemented simultaneously.

Carrier’s drive for innovation continues today with a renewed focus on creating solutions that will change the world for the better.

Actionable strategies

Healthy buildings experts at Carrier have identified several actionable strategies that schools can take related to engineering systems. These cover areas including ventilation, filtration controls and touchless solutions.

• Six air changes per hour in classrooms is an ideal goal, while five is still a meaningful improvement above current ventilation rates in most classrooms.
• Buildings should eliminate or reduce air recirculation — improving the intake of fresh outdoor air — to the greatest extent possible.
• In buildings with mechanical ventilation systems, existing filters can be upgraded to filters with efficiency ratings of at least MERV 13 or the highest MERV rating the system can handle. 
• Portable air cleaners with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters may be useful to reduce exposures to airborne particles.
• Schools can also focus on enhancing ventilation and filtration through a process of commissioning and testing.
• No-contact infrastructure is an engineering control method used to reduce the indirect spread of pathogens from fomites. This includes technologies such as automatic dispensers of hand soap/hand sanitizer/paper towels.

These are just a few examples of strategies that can help schools improve indoor air quality (IAQ) and overall building health. For additional strategies, guidance on how to take advantage of new funding and free assessments to get started, schools can turn to Carrier and its Healthy Buildings Program.

Through an industry-leading suite of advanced solutions and services, Carrier’s Healthy Buildings Program helps deliver healthy, safe, efficient and productive indoor environments at a time they’re needed most. The program draws from technologies designed to help improve IAQ by increasing outside air, improving temperature and humidity levels, managing occupancy density, optimizing energy efficiency, and enabling touchless interactions.

The future of schools

From a safe reopening to ongoing enhancements to student performance, a healthier future starts indoors. See how Carrier can work with you to unlock the enormous potential of healthy schools and access $54 billion in federal funding to ensure safer operation in the short term and enhance student health and performance for generations to come. 

Connect with your local Carrier expert or visit carrier.com/K-12 to learn more. 

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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 securing donations, or receive assistance operationalizing guidance in the ever-changing world of a pandemic. In communities where inequities already exist in health, funding, employment, information, or resources (or the ability to access them), those disparities disproportionately impact the schools.

Helping the school system

The Global Health Crisis Coordination Center (GHC3), a division of the Center for Global Health Innovation, has partnered closely with an inner-city school district in a low-resource zone of Atlanta over the past year. The students and families in this district face multiple impediments to learning, including limited access to affordable healthcare services, online resources, and economic opportunity, as well as food insecurity and other challenges.

The ADECIA ceiling microphone & line array speaker solution helps overcome challenges with implementation, configuration and room acoustics.

In working with this school system, our global health experts identified four key areas from the CDC Considerations and Guidelines for Schools to be the categories of greatest need when addressing the inequities in this school system: health and safety, technology, learning environment, and communications. To get schools the assistance they need, GHC3 has helped procure significant donations in these categories, working closely with the schools to answer questions about COVID-19, assisting teachers and administrators with communicating COVID-19 information to students and parents, and facilitating dialogue between the school, CDC, local health departments, and community partners.

A K-12 Playbook on WhentoTest.org has been developed through these partnerships that focused on inequities, helping schools to operationalize safety guidance and mitigate COVID-19 transmission. Supporting schools in this manner allows the teachers and administrators to get back to the important work of educating our youth, providing for their families, and minimizing the inequities in their communities.

The post COVID-19 Shines Spotlight on Inequities, Especially in Our Schools appeared first on Education and Career News.

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 reproductive issues.

So, what is the answer? Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) is a compound that is produced naturally in the human body as part of our immune response and can be produced outside of the body by running saltwater through an electrolysis process. This process only contains three elements: salt, water, and electricity. When scientifically engineered properly, HOCl kills 99.99 percent of viruses and bacteria without harsh chemicals and toxic fumes. It’s a smarter, healthier way to clean. And our children deserve it.

The post Our Kids Deserve Cleaner, Healthier Classrooms appeared first on Education and Career News.

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 depression. It’s not always on display. As children, we’re often taught the importance of being able to walk in someone else’s shoes. And while you can try to imagine what it’s like to walk in another person’s shoes, we are the sum of all our experiences. So, we cannot truly understand what it is like to be that person on a daily basis. But we can be supportive of each other.

The majority of young people will not tell an adult about the challenges they are facing, but they will tell a peer. Today’s classrooms and educators are not equipped to provide children with the support they need. While they can do their best to provide students with the help they need, our children need the guidance of the right people, in the right environments.

A heartwarming tale

With the help of the nonprofit Be Strong, Mary found that her daughter, student leader Lydia, had deeply benefitted from its programs made to recruit, train, and mobilize students.

“I never knew about this program until my kids were nominated. You never know how valuable this program has become for my kids. My oldest was bullied for years and then took a stand against it one year. That changed her life.”

“She saved a girl yesterday at school. I got a phone call from the school counselor saying a 7th grader in my daughter’s class was talking about being bullied and wanted to end her life. My daughter said something so special to her that she asked Lydia to go with her to the counselor. Lydia told her it was a safe and judgement free zone. Lydia explained to the counselor what was going on and excused herself so they could have a private conversation. With the student’s permission, she called the girl’s parents, and they had a conversation about seeking help.”

“The school counselor has never had a student help another student like my daughter did. I’m so proud of my eldest who just turned 13. So, I just want to thank this program for helping my kids help others. Even if it is just one life saved.”

Be strong

It is crucial that we look past the surface and be confronted with the idea that none of us are what we can see. There’s so much more to us than what meets the eye. A global pandemic coupled with social and political discord have exacerbated a growing national mental health crisis that spans every generation and demographic. America’s youth face an exceptionally high risk. Sixty-three percent of young adults report symptoms of anxiety and depression, and a staggering one in four reported considering suicide because of the pandemic. 

Now more than ever, our charities like Be Strong need your help to create the conditions for action, compassion, and empathy.

The post Redefining Toughness as the Ability to Ask for Help appeared first on Education and Career News.

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.

Teachers cannot look at a classroom of 30 students or more and assume that anything is common sense when it comes to preventing the spread of germs — especially COVID-19. It’s a good idea to reinforce best practices and guidelines for safety in the classroom, even if some of the advice seems like it should be a no-brainer for kids:

• Handwashing for a minimum of 20 seconds
• Maintaining a safe distance from other students
• Sanitizing hands and surfaces with a product that’s at least 70 percent alcohol

When it comes to stopping the spread of germs, we need to make common sense as common as it should be.

The post Teaching Common Sense Hygiene Habits for the Classroom appeared first on Education and Career News.

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 filters may be upgraded to filters with efficiency ratings of at least MERV 13. If existing HVAC systems cannot accommodate MERV 13 filters, in-room HEPA air filter units can dramatically improve indoor air quality. This type is eligible for new federal funding under the recent omnibus spending bill, which set aside $54 billion for HVAC system upgrades and safety supplies.

What is one tip you have for administrators as schools go back to in-person learning?

One thing I’d tell administrators is to look at their building holistically and long term. The immediate goal is to safely enable in-person learning, but new funding is also providing opportunities to impact students for generations. Research shows that making school buildings healthier, especially with respect to ventilation and air quality, will yield resilient schools that are more prepared to support students in future outbreaks and improve overall student wellbeing and cognitive performance. Our experts in the Carrier Healthy Buildings Program can help identify these opportunities and support ongoing improvements for the building lifecycle.

The post Make Your School a Healthier School appeared first on Education and Career News.

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 educator and parent must address: What school safety practices have we ignored while we were dealing with COVID-19? Schools must now transition from survival mode into the next thing.

Is the cure worse than the disease?

Amid virtual schooling, teachers and students prefer, crave, and even demand face-to-face, relationship-based instruction. While children are at low risk for serious COVID-19 complications, there have been significant increases in other threats to children’s well-being including increased anxiety and isolation, dramatic spikes in youth suicide, and steep decreases in academic achievement. Which is a larger threat to students and teachers: COVID-19 or the negatives engendered by remaining out of school?

Getting back to the basics of school safety and violence prevention in post-pandemic education.

Our mantra for safety has always been to do what is best for kids, not what is convenient or pleasing for adults. That certainly applies in re-opening our schools.

Regardless of age, it is critical to plan for students who come back to school in a different academic, economic, or emotional place than when they left. While everyone may have been in the same boat, the storm was different for each person.

The return to normal

Planning a return to school cannot just center on a return to normal. What has already occurred will not magically disappear. What we used to do every year is no longer viable, because we have a unique opportunity to not just survive but thrive.

Our goal should be to rebuild from the chaos to make schools into what they should be. That means applying a decision-making metric that goes beyond crafting temporary fixes, or grudging compliance with top-down directives. The future of our kids, and our society, depends on it.

The post Education in the Wake of a Pandemic appeared first on Education and Career News.

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. Exterior perimeter doors should never be left open during the school day. Proper ventilation is a necessary measure during the pandemic, but this can be done without sacrificing perimeter security. Schools cannot afford expensive air purification systems, but they can still take common sense precautions to ensure safety while providing ventilation.

Getting back to the basics of school safety and violence prevention in post-pandemic education.

Leaving interior doors that are not vulnerable to unauthorized access is one means of increasing ventilation. Some building access doors are inside of the fenced perimeter of a campus, so they can be left open. Any door that is left open should be in the locked position. This allows a staff member to simply pull it shut if a lockdown incident occurs.

Wearing of masks is something new to school safety. However, they pose a safety-related vulnerability. Instituting a policy where all students and staff wear visible school identification at all times mitigates this vulnerability.

All ingress into a school after school starts should be directed through a secure single point of entry. Having a strict No Visitor policy in effect will keep this point of entry monitored and secured. A system for signing visitors in with a visible identification badge will also assist in monitoring who is on campus.

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