Prizmah has been monitoring the rapidly evolving coronavirus epidemic in an effort to best support all of our educational leaders. The Prizmah team has approached the coronavirus work in six ways: 1) Curate and disseminate critical information to school leaders;
2) Serve as the network for sharing of information between school leaders;
3) Identify and address common questions that day school leaders are currently facing;
4) Serve as a point of contact with North American leaders in infectious disease, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and US Department of Health and Human Services, and curate resources from Canadian leading experts who are already guiding the schools in Canada.
5) Negotiate discounts and arrange fieldwide learning opportunities with virtual learning providers;
6) Support local Federations and Boards of Jewish Education to craft unified community messaging. We will continue to be proactive in supporting the day school field as news and information develops. A number of the resources we have developed can be found below. Prizmah regularly updates our Knowledge Center with resources on the coronavirus epidemic, and we have unique resources for our Canadian and U.S. schools. There, you will find a link to notes from this week's webinar Keeping Calm and Staying Healthy in the Face of Coronavirus, to help you address school needs, student well-being, and policies and procedures. After educating yourselves with these and other credible materials, school administrators may wish to think about contingency plans including: identifying a single contact person in each school for coronavirus questions; implications if many students, teachers, and staff need to be absent or if the school needs to be partially or fully closed for a time; steps to ensure good communication; educational considerations during a school closure, should that become necessary; implications for spring trips, etc. You can also find letters that schools have sent out regarding the virus here. The Head of School Reshet has been an active peer-to-peer community throughout this period. If you are a head of school who is not already a part of this Reshet, click here to join. We are happy to connect you with other schools that have similar concerns, and have a Prizmah-specific contact person at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention able to respond to our school-related inquiries. Please reach out to Debra Shaffer Seeman for unique school needs and questions. Some of our school communities have already been impacted by school closures and community quarantines. We have all those affected in our thoughts and prayers, and are incredibly grateful to the greater day school field for their support of our students and schools. We appreciate just how meaningful it is to be a part of a caring community at such a challenging time. We wish each and every individual affected a refuah shleimah, and we will continue to share more learning and support opportunities as the situation develops. |
