SynaptiBlog #002 | Back-to-School Plans: The Devil is in the details, so where are they?

This is a troubling time for students, parents, and school leaders. All stakeholders want schools to ultimately reopen, but they also know that the stakes are too high for schools to rollout rushed, vague, or incoherent school resumption plans. As they focus on their restart, some (but not all) schools and school districts have publicly released back-to-school plans, but often the reader is left wondering since when does planning to eventually make a plan count as a “plan?”

After reviewing back-to-school communications for hundreds of high-performing K-12 public, private, and parochial schools nationwide, SynapticPub urges stakeholders to demand transparent school resumption policies that explicitly address the following key restart planning procedures:

Incident Response

This element describes the processes and procedures that anticipate, detect, and mitigate the effects of educational disruption.

Incident Recovery

This step describes the preparation for and recovery from an educational disruption.

Educational Continuity

This ensures that critical teaching, learning, and operational functions can continue if an educational disruption occurs.

On a positive note, our research uncovered district-wide and local-level examples of thoughtful, specific, and actionable back-to-school policies (click here for a district example). For students, teachers, and parents who have received dubious “plans” that contain high hopes but few [or no] specifics, now is the time to ask school leaders for clear protocols and specific implementation procedures.

TLDR Version

Back-to-school policy overviews are essential communications, but they are insufficient in and of themselves. Students and families deserve to see detailed and complete contingency policies with clear protocols and implementation procedures that flesh out policy summaries, not just feel-good statements about eventually planning.