To guide the discussions around reopening schools, a multidisciplinary team of Johns Hopkins researchers launched a website that provides a range of tools dedicated to assessing K-12 school reopening plans across the United States from an equity lens, including a School Reopening Policy Tracker that provides real-time analysis of the latest guidance from every state. 

The COVID-19 School Reopening School Checklist poses questions about continuity of learning, student engagement, food security, health, supervision and housing. The checklist is designed to help schools evaluate the status of their students and families following school closures during spring 2020 and guide school leaders as they think through how to equitably meet the needs of students from disadvantaged groups as schools consider reopening plans.

“Schools are a nexus of health and well-being for children, particularly in less resourced communities where the burdens of the pandemic are being borne disproportionately,” says Megan Collins, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Hopkins Consortium for School-Based Health Solutions. “While schools will be monitoring the COVID-19 ‘learning slide’ (the loss of learning experienced by a student when they are not engaged in regular academic activities), what is missing is an eye on equity for disadvantaged groups. Even as education and public health leaders advocate for making classroom-based education a priority for those children most at risk for missing school, there is no clear guidance from school districts about how structural justice problems should be addressed. By creating the eSchool+ Initiative, we hope to contribute to ongoing discussions about narrowing health and academic equity gaps for disadvantaged students.”

Johns Hopkins experts working on this topic are available for interviews on school reopenings. Please contact [email protected]. 

Megan Collins, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Wilmer Eye Institute and Associate Faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics 

Katherine Connor, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center

Sara Johnson, M.P.H., Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center

For information from Johns Hopkins Medicine about the coronavirus pandemic, visit hopkinsmedicine.org/coronavirus. For information on the coronavirus from throughout the Johns Hopkins enterprise, including the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Johns Hopkins University, visit coronavirus.jhu.edu.